Circles in the Dirt
by leradny
Summary: Everyone starts acting weirder and weirder as a series of murders occurs near Destiny High School. Policeman on the case: Squall Leonhart. AU, LeonYuna.
1. Green Sanidine

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Green Sanidine_

-

There was a rectangular cage filled with birds on the steps of the house of Leon Loire's house. The birds were bright colors, but the house itself was plain. It was a dark, muted blue and a certain shade of white that was probably on its way to turning gray. Yuna wasn't surprised at the starkness of the color scheme, but she didn't know he kept birds.

She stared curiously at the brightest red canary and smiled when it sang at her, a bright little warbling trill, then continued past the uncomfortably spartan surroundings and rang the doorbell with one hand. The other arm was engulfed in the stiff, heavy folds of Leon's jacket. For some reason it made her uneasy that the black sleeves trailed almost all the way down to her knees.

She also felt strange coming here, when she didn't know Leon personally. But the address had been sewn into the jacket, probably as a well-thought-out precaution, so she had an excuse after finding it sprawled carelessly over a park bench.

An unintelligible voice answered her. Yuna cringed. "Er... I'm Yuna. I'm here to return something of... Officer Loire's..."

The door wrenched open to reveal a somewhat shorter than average person with a deep-barreled chest. To her dismay, his voice wasn't that much clearer up close, but gradually she could make out words and phrases that sounded like "Making sure you were an actual _girl,_" "You don't know how many sickos come here raring for Leon's head," and "Come in."

He was wearing a sailor's suit, crisply cut and fitted. It was blue and white, primarily. Whether this denoted he was actually a sailor, Yuna didn't know, but if it did, then it would certainly explain why Leon Loire lived with him. A police officer and a sailor.

"Is he here right now?" Yuna asked, trailing behind him meekly and taking a seat in the kitchen. She set the black jacket on her lap. It was not very warm.

"What? No." Gabble... "But he'll probably be here before five."

Yuna checked her watch self-consciously. It was four forty-seven. But some cheerful burbling and squawking from the corner of the kitchen made her look up. There were six more birds in a cage, only parakeets instead of canaries, and a lot of them were green. The sailor caught her gaze and smiled.

"They're mine. I keep them around for the talk." One of them made a sound like a police siren and he cackled. He sounded an awful lot like his birds when he laughed.

"Um..." Yuna didn't know what to say to that. "Who are you again?"

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry. I forgot. My name's Donald." He stood up abruptly and began fiddling with the arrangement of mirrors and bobbles in the cage, bright colored things with bells on them. When his voice was lower and mumbling he sounded even more like a bird. Possibly a duck. Yuna squirmed uncomfortably as he took hold of a green one and placed it on his shoulder. "Do you want anything to drink, Yuna?"

"Just water, please," Yuna whispered.

"Aye, water for the lady."

"Aye!" the parakeet mimicked.

Yuna smiled at that. "Did you teach them?"

"Sure I did." The sailor efficiently filled a glass of water and set it in front of her briskly, without spilling a drop. "They're dumb as doorknobs, though, so I just recorded myself saying something and played it right next to the cage. This one knows sea chanties. Don't you, Mr. Cotton?"

"Wind in the sails," the bird replied, very softly.

Donald brushed the soft feathered chest to get him on his hand, then held him out to Yuna, who allowed the bird to sit on her wrist. "Here, listen. We're devils and black sheep and really bad eggs...!"

An expectant pause came up as Yuna began stroking the wings. Mr. Cotton merely began preening himself and Donald scowled.

"And _really bad eggs_!"

A faint twitter. "Drink up me hearties, yo ho!"

At that point the door opened forcefully. Yuna was further distracted as the bird began climbing up her arm, methodically grabbing her sleeve with its beak and occasionally pinching the skin beneath it as well.

"Donald," came a somewhat familiar voice accusingly. "You left the door open. _Yuna_!"

"Ow!" Yuna said. Mr. Cotton was now perched on her shoulder and pulling on strands of her hair--affectionately, it seemed. It prickled more than hurt, but she'd said it mostly out of reflex. She didn't want to know what would happen if he pulled on her earring.

Donald picked up Mr. Cotton in one hand--"That's enough pulling of the poor girl's hair, Mr. Cotton. It's back to the cage for you!"--and deposited the bird back in the cage unceremoniously. There was a slight uproar of chaos as feathers fluttered everywhere, which gradually settled down as Leon looked faintly curious at the sight of Yuna.

"She came a few minutes ago, Leon. Said she wanted to return something." The sailor grabbed a jar of birdseed and started walking. "Anyway, I will go and feed your pet, Leon, since I have no idea if you care enough to do it regularly or not."

"I _do_," Leon said defensively. He sat down across the table from Yuna and she pulled the folded, fur-lined jacket out from under her side.

There was a slightly awkward silence as Donald left and Leon seemed confused. 

"This is yours... um... Officer." There was too much black on it to be anyone else's, besides maybe Lulu, and she wouldn't wear a man's jacket. "You left it on a bench at the park..."

"Oh, that." The policeman unrolled it carelessly, then draped it across the back of a chair. Another pause. "Thanks. I was wondering where it went. I kind of figured it would be you who returned it to me."

"You're welcome."

Conversations with Leon tended to be on the awkward side for both of them, since neither was especially chatty and Leon was incredibly intimidating. Particularly in full uniform with a gun, which was nearly always how Yuna saw him as he was her high school's mandatory security officer. She could not explain the vague sense of unease that contributed greatly to the uncomfortable conversations, except that Leon always seemed mildly irritated for no apparent reason, and she tended to stay away from people like that out of fear for her life.

"..." Yuna cleared her throat and managed to say, with a minimum of shake in her voice, "I'm going to go now... sir."

His grayish blue eyes flicked back to her. "Oh. Okay."

He stood up and showed her to the door.

"Goodbye, Yuna."

"Goodbye...!" 

The door closed and Yuna doubled over abruptly, breathing rather too hard for her taste. She hoped Leon wasn't still close enough to hear her faint panic attack and realized, with a pang of regret, that he had actually been quite polite for someone who scared her so much. She wondered what would happen if she told this to Rikku.


	2. White Chalk

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_White Chalk_

-  
Yuna fidgeted and kept her legs crossed in the dubiously comfortable chair in Aerith Gainsborough's office. The woman was the chief psychologist and Yuna had been visiting her quite a lot. Particularly over the past year, after Tidus left.

Right now the woman was finishing up a conversation on the phone. "...Okay? All right. Bye, Zack." Aerith put the phone down and directed her attention to Yuna. "Sorry, Yuna. I didn't expect you to come today; you never come on Mondays."

Yuna shrugged.

"So what's wrong?"

"I think that maybe... I am too shy." Those piercing green eyes were very level, offset by her soft pink dress, which made Yuna feel strange because she had only one green eye. But she had gotten used to the gaze.

Aerith smiled. "Well, it wouldn't take a therapist to figure that out. But what made _you_ come to that conclusion?"

"Yesterday, I..." Yuna struggled and her hands clutched nervously at the pleats in her skirt. But Aerith never forced her to say things, which included even mild prodding, so she went on quickly, "I... found something... that belonged to Officer Loire... and I returned it, but I realized that I was... scared of him."

"Well, you're a very quiet girl and Leon only ever wears black and carries a gun. Sometimes _I'm_ scared of him."

Yuna lowered her head sharply so her chin jutted into her collarbone and she mumbled something indecisively. "mumblemumble... breathing very hard..."

"Do you mean you had a panic attack?!" Aerith sat up straight and Yuna wished she hadn't said that. "Yuna, if you're having those for no reason other than being in Leon's presence, this is serious."

Yuna wondered if there were pills in the equation.

"You need to get out more!"

-

Yuna closed the door to Aerith's office, feeling miserable for no apparent reason. Then she caught sight of a certain silver-haired boy waiting patiently with his arms crossed over his white and yellow vest.

"Oh, hello, Riku." She had gotten used to knowing two people with the same name. "Are you waiting to see Aerith?"

"Yes." He focused his gaze on her and said sternly, "You will tell no one."

"...Okay..."

"Hnh!" Riku smiled at her brightly. Yuna was always surprised when she remembered he was younger than her by a year or so. "I'm actually just changing my schedule. Again. See you later, Yuna. At least, if I have any classes with you again." He breezed into the office without a second glance.

So far, Riku had changed his schedule three times and still was not satisfied with it. He had, as a result, been in almost every one of Yuna's classes over the past month, and all of them were for seniors or required a recommendation from the previous teachers. From what she'd heard, he was something of a prodigy, or at least a very hard worker.

Everyone had been surprised when he'd skipped a grade, going straight from freshman to junior after his one-year disappearance; but not nearly surprised as during freshman year, when he had cut his famous silver mane short. He was quite silent, but not the same frightening-quiet as Leon, so he often faded into the background until he did something shocking.

Rikku had proclaimed she would never forgive Riku for cutting his hair, along with Selphie and a rather disturbing amount of Yuna's other friends, but lately the blonde seemed to have forgotten about it.

Yuna looked at the closed door and wondered what Riku would do next. She looked at her hall pass and slowly began to wander back to her classroom.

-

Officer Loire was keeping his eyes stoically fixed to the doorway, and Yuna had thoughts about going to the other end of the hallway when he, for no apparent reason, turned to her.

"Hello, Yuna."

"...Hello, Officer Loire..." She couldn't very well turn back _now_. So she turned left and set off at a slightly brisker pace than normal. To her surprise, he accompanied her, which did not make her feel safe at all.

"Well, _you_ don't mispronounce my last name... but others do. So you can just call me Leon." He paused and then looked at her curiously. "Yuna, what class do you have right now?"

It stuck Yuna as odd, since he didn't sound particularly suspicious, but she answered it anyway while still keeping up her fast walk. "I'm going to English right now. Mrs. Harvey's class."

The policeman stopped, and fixed his intimidating gaze two doors behind them. When he spoke next, it was very nearly in a helpful tone. "You've just passed it."

Yuna realized she was nearly to the library. It was the center of activity at lunchtime, mostly because of the attractive librarian Quistis Trepe, but now the hallway was entirely empty except for Leon and Yuna. She took one step cringingly, and then another, trying not to look uncomfortable as she did.

It appeared to pass the test. Leon nodded and returned to his stationary post near the entrance while Yuna breathed a sigh of relief and pushed into the room.

-  
"Yuna, don't!!" Rikku dashed into her sight and blocked her from entering the line at the snack cart in the cafeteria. "Remember when we were in middle school and we mutually agreed without persuasion on either part that blueberries were the nastiest things _ever_, and that we'd both tell each other if there were blueberries around to spare each other from the horrible taste? Well, this is it. _Don't get the blueberry crumble!_"

"_Yech!_" Yuna sidestepped her cousin anyway. "Don't worry! I wasn't planning on it."

She asked for two sugar cookies instead. A brief mishap occurred when she realized she had a dollar in dimes in her backpack, _not_ in her pocket, and she fumbled with the change under Rikku's green, hawklike gaze until the money was exchanged and they both carted their lunches to a quiet bench under a tree. It was their usual spot.

As Yuna started dutifully munching on her egg salad sandwich, Rikku leaned over and opened her eyes very widely so as to look innocent.

"Yuna, my beautiful cousin-sister-friend, can I _please_ have a sugar cookie?" There was soda and various candy spilled out over the blonde's lap already. But Yuna sighed and handed Rikku one of the cookies. She'd planned ahead for this.

"Fine. But you know you could have gotten one yourself."

"But I didn't _want_ to wait in line for a stupid cookie!"

Yuna smiled, and then Paine joined them suddenly. She was not the happiest person around, especially compared to Rikku, and Yuna had the sneaking suspicion that Paine was her friend only because she was not the sort to spread malicious rumors around the school. However, the friendship as it was _felt_ sincere--Paine was not even half as icy as she had been when she and Yuna were juniors, and she had proven herself to be a very loyal, if rather hard-bitten friend.

As Leon stalked by in his polished black dress shoes and Yuna watched him pensively, she thought privately that Paine and Leon would either get along very well or remain strangers for the rest of their lives. She was not the only one watching him.

Or was she?

"Yuna, you seem more frightened than usual."

So Paine had been watching _her_, not Leon. However, just because the girl was Yuna's best friend other than Rikku did not mean she was nice. While she stuttered and mumbled a bit, Paine gave her a very condescending look.

"Leon is a _policeman_," she drawled. "He wouldn't jeopardize his sterling reputation on the force and harm a student at the very school he was assigned to protect--no matter _how_ intimidating he is."

"Don't tell me that I need to get out more!" Yuna snapped, feeling bitter and not knowing why.

Paine looked surprised. "I was _saying_ that you need to toughen up."


	3. Blue Quartz

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Blue Quartz_

"_The only reason Leon knows your name is because you hang out with __**me**_."

-  
The words rolled around Yuna's head in Paine's intimidatingly honest, brutal tone. She was sitting on the bleachers in the gym, waiting for Mr. Leiden to arrive. He had told them specifically not to dress in their uniforms, as they would not be doing their regular class today, and Yuna wondered what was going on.

Mr. Leiden arrived, distinctively clad in a regular outfit as well. "Good afternoon, students."

"Hi, Mr. Leiden," several people chorused. Mostly they were girls and a few dutiful boys.

"Now, as all of you are seniors, I bet there is one thing you're looking forward to. Prom!" An ungainly cheer rose up from the crowd. Yuna did not comment. "But, since there will be chaperones at the Galbadia Garden ballroom--and since it _is_, in fact, a ballroom--I feel it is my duty to hold a special class today. Dancing!"

Most of the male students groaned. The girls looked excited and whispered to each other excitedly. Yuna felt nervous as Mr. Leiden gave them a very dignified and pointed glare.

"Everyone pair up. The quicker you do this, the more... Oh, I'll just do it myself." The gym teacher began methodically sorting the throng of students into pairs of the opposite gender, arranging them as he went so the couples were spread out over the entire gym floor with room to move. However, by the time he got to Yuna, cringing in the bleachers, there was nobody left.

"Rats!" Mr. Leiden looked around quickly. "I'm sorry, Yuna. I guess you'll have to wait your turn."

"The principal knows how to dance," someone snickered.

"The principal is a woman. Oh! I know!" He left the gym, presumably for his office. There was no phone in the gym. Yuna felt tired and humiliated as people began giggling and holding side conversations, even though she was sure only a few of them were actually about her. But this didn't last long; very soon Mr. Leiden returned and assured Yuna she would have a suitable partner (he could not dance due to an injury he'd sustained to his knee from his youth), then set off teaching the other students the basic waltz step.

-  
"...All together now. One-two-three, one-two-three--" the couples dipped in unison, to music from a radio Mr. Leiden had retrieved from his office, and Yuna felt very alone.

Then the gym doors burst open with a bang. Everyone stopped moving as Officer Leon Loire swept his gaze around the room, first urgently, then confusedly. He frowned at Mr. Leiden and said sternly, "Yang, there appears to be no _situation_ here as you led me to believe."

"Oh, but there is!" The teacher gestured to Yuna. She shrank. "Yuna doesn't have a partner!"

"Partner...?" The police officer looked at the students, in pairs across the whole room, as if seeing them in a new light. "You're teaching them how to dance?"

"Of course! They're going to the classiest ballroom in fancy dresses and suits. They _have_ to know."

"You mean before today, none of them knew how to _dance_?" Leon looked irritated and condescending. It reminded Yuna of Paine. "But it's _disgustingly_ easy."

Nobody knew what to say to that. An eerie, rather ashamed silence fell abruptly over the room. People let go of their partners. Finally Yuna spoke up quietly, attempting to validate herself.

"I know how to dance." Everyone looked at her and she cringed. "Just, not this kind."

"..." Leon sighed. "Oh, all right." He walked over to the bleachers resignedly. There were several snickers and giggles, as well as sighs from a lot of the girls he passed by. Suddenly he stopped and unstrapped his holster. "I should probably put my gun away."

The sighs stopped abruptly. As Mr. Leiden took the gun to his office, Leon stood in front of Yuna and held his hand out, looking very regal all of a sudden. She stepped off the bleachers and took it, feeling plain and uninteresting. A vague giggle flittered across the whole room, but Leon seemed to be ignoring it as he led Yuna courteously to a corner of the floor. His right hand remained lightly grasping hers, while the other went to her waist.

He _did_ seem to know what he was doing. Yuna put her left hand on his shoulder as she had seen everyone else do. Mr. Leiden set the CD to a different, somewhat faster track, then set about correcting everyone's posture as the waltzing began again.

"Look over my shoulder," Leon instructed. Yuna looked over his right shoulder. "_Other_ shoulder." She quickly corrected her gaze. "Relax." Her shoulders shifted down a bit. She didn't feel very relaxed, but it seemed to be enough.

It would take Mr. Leiden a while to get to them, as he had started from the other side of the room. Leon was a fast dancer, and she kept tripping until Leon told her that she was stepping back with the wrong foot, and also that she was not stepping back far enough.

"Step back with your _right_ foot and let your weight settle entirely on it. I know it's hard, but take the largest step you can. Now bring your other foot back, but don't put it down--bring it to the side and shift your weight to that foot. Now close your feet together. There. Remember to keep your chin lifted. Step forward now, with your _left_..."

Leon was right. Compared to traditional Japanese dancing, which was what Yuna had spent four summers practicing, this was perhaps not disgustingly easy but very close. Eventually, as they began to waltz somewhat more smoothly, Yuna waited for Mr. Leiden to come over, but he never did. Leon kept correcting her posture on his own; perhaps that was why the teacher was not paying much attention to them.

-

The officer had gotten bored after the first few minutes of the box step, once Yuna had caught up to his pace, and had started to lead her through other, flashier steps. He did not allow her to look down, instead going through the steps slowly in front of her so she could watch. Others followed suit for the first few steps, performing them as well; but as Leon carefully led her through a dizzyingly complicated number everyone stopped in favor of watching them curiously.

This dance involved a lot of flourishes with the arms and Yuna felt very self-conscious as Leon said he would not do them in the dance, even though he'd demonstrated for her. They were specifically for women, he said. However, that was nothing compared to how she felt when Leon told her they would let go of each other, move around the floor, and end up back to back before re-establishing a hold.

"What makes this part interesting is the gaze. If you aren't watching where you're going, or your partner, people will wonder how you do it. Also, the arms."

"Wh-what if I end up in the wrong place?" Yuna stammered.

Leon frowned. "If you make sure your steps are the same size, you will end up in the right place. And don't _look_ at me."

-  
The music swelled. Yuna smiled as they prepared for the more difficult part of the dance and realized she was having a lot of fun, especially with the spins. She performed all the arm flourishes and wide steps mostly perfectly (she tripped _once_, but she managed to recover in time), and kept her gaze away from Leon until the very last spin, when she stepped forward into the regular waltz hold and stopped dead. She couldn't help it.

She heard the music playing and knew that everyone was expecting them to keep moving, but Yuna felt self-conscious again. She had stepped in too far and was much, much closer to Leon than before. She could see his gray-blue eyes. Then he stepped away from her rather stiffly and turned to the rest of the class.

"When I was in Germany, you _had_ to dance at that level. Otherwise you would look like a moron."

-

"_You got to dance with Noir Loire!_" Rikku shrieked.

"Hush... _Rikku_!" Yuna was watching her cousin go crazy, bouncing on the spring mattress excitedly. She was almost eighteen, but she still shared a room with Rikku because the blonde did not like being alone, especially not during thunderstorms. Privately Yuna thought it was nice to have someone else, too, but right now it was rather annoying.

"DId you have to switch partners? Did you get to _slow_ dance? What kind of dance were you dancing?"

"I think it was a Viennese waltz, so no, it wasn't very slow at all..."

"Is he good? Gosh, once this gets around _every_ girl in town will learn how to dance. Yuna, _teach __**me**__ so I'll have a head start!_"

"Rikku... no." Yuna sighed and picked at the corner of her blanket. Rikku noticed.

"Geez, Yuna, normally when you find out a guy can dance he gets _less_ scary, not _more_."

"He said he learned in _Germany_," Yuna answered, flatly.

"Oh. _Oh!_ Tidus is playing _soccer_ in Germany!" A pause. "Oh my god, I said it! I'm sorry, Yuna!"

"No, don't be." Yuna flopped down on her side. "I'm over it."


	4. Turquoise

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Turquoise_

This was the third time Yuna had run into Noir Loire this week. (She sternly admonished herself for using that nickname, even though it was particularly clever of Rikku.) He was standing outside the library at lunchtime reading a book. Yuna was appalled as she read the title on its spine--Genetics. She knew he had seen her eyes, but she hadn't known that he would research it the next day.

"Hello, Yuna," he said courteously, if a bit blankly. But that was normal for him.

"H-hello..." And Yuna ran into the library pretending it was urgent.

"Yuna!" Rikku waved at her from a table. It had a lot of dusty fashion magazines spread all over it, and Yuna wondered faintly what they were doing, especially with Paine sitting right there. Paine liked to laugh at those things.

The latter gave Yuna an appraising glance. "Leon is right outside the library," Paine remarked. "Would that have anything to do with how you just ran in?"

"Paine, be nice," Rikku scolded. "It's not _her_ fault he's so scary."

"Um, I don't think we should talk about that so _loudly_..." Yuna sat down tiredly and picked up a fashion magazine. "Rikku, what are you doing with these?"

"Oh, they were there already. I'm just skimming."

Paine snorted.

Riku, Kairi, and Sora entered the library next, looking somewhat subdued. Yuna sighed.

"Hey, Sora! Hey Kairi! Hi, Riku!" Rikku waved as she shouted her hellos. It sounded much louder from here.

Riku smirked and Kairi elbowed him playfully. She said something to him, but Yuna only caught the last words as the trio passed: "...be like. I mean, as a girl."

"You know I'm sexy enough as it is, Kairi." Riku tossed his head.

"I wonder what _I_ would be like as a girl..." Sora mused.

His silver haired friend got a look of deep contemplation. Then he answered, "I don't know why, Sora, but I'm seeing pink birds with you."

Kairi snorted. "As if Sora would have anything to do with pink birds!"

They laughed, all three of them, and Yuna wished that Paine would laugh more sometimes. It was intimidating to laugh with someone sitting silently next to you.

"And you would marry a guy named Matt," Riku finished. The younger trio settled on a table somewhat out of earshot of Yuna, Rikku, and Paine.

"You know, you've got to respect that Riku," Paine said. "Even though he's successfully skipped up a grade, he still hangs out with those two."

"Well... they _are_ still his best friends," Yuna pointed out. This was followed by complete silence. Then Rikku turned to Yuna curiously.

"So, what were you running around for, Yunie?"

Yuna cringed. "Leo--Officer Loire."

"Don't bother, Yuna," Paine said off-handedly. "You can say his name if he can't hear you." Obviously _she_ did not care much about it, but Yuna did.

"He was reading a book about _genetics!_" she burst out. It took a rather large weight off her chest, but as a result she did not quite know how to feel. Now she felt nervous and fluttery as opposed to just insecure. "I think it had something to do with my eyes."

Paine and Rikku looked at each other quickly. Then Rikku said soothingly, "Yunie, just because Leon's reading a book about genetics the day _after_ he's forced to be your partner for that special dance class--" Yuna made a frantic shushing noise as Kairi, Riku, and Sora looked over curiously. Along with the rest of the library. "--Does _not_ mean it's because of you. Maybe he's just well-read."

The room got very quiet all of a sudden. Then Leon walked in and put the genetics book on the return cart, seeming not to notice the complete silence--or perhaps he expected it from a library. As soon as he was gone, everyone swarmed around Rikku, Yuna, and Paine.

"Is it true?!" Selphie asked. "Did you actually _dance_ with Noir Loire?!" She was good friends with Rikku, so Yuna wasn't too surprised at her use of the nickname.

She floundered in the sudden flood of questions, mostly from girls, and Paine gave Rikku a very nasty glare. Yuna wished _she_ could do that, but she she knew wasn't brave enough; and it didn't help that Rikku was her cousin. Together, she and her two friends managed to slog their way out of the scene in the library. Leon, even if it had been caused by something other than himself, would have restored order in a second. However, the policeman was not outside, which relieved Yuna somewhat.

But she ran to class anyway.

-  
"Hi, Yuna!" Riku seemed very cheerful today. Yuna thought it was because of what happened at lunch. She hoped he wouldn't say anything about it and greeted him distractedly, returning almost immediately to sketching the face of their current model.

Zell Dincht had been chosen today. It was a very sought-after position for some students who were either very lazy or very vain, or both, as being a model required nothing but to sit very still on a high stool as the class drew them. Zell had not been chosen at random, which was how their art teacher Edward von Muir usually chose his models: Zell had gotten a very striking facial tattoo over the summer. It had been rather swollen and red at the beginning of the year, but today his skin appeared to be completely healed and Mr. Muir had declared Zell to be fit for modeling.

Yuna was worried about messing up on the tattoo. Normally she wouldn't worry about something like this, but today she was simply trying to stop thinking about the scene in the library with Leon, and later the mess with the mostly female mob.

_...Oh!_ Her forehead creased worriedly. She erased part of Zell's tattoo, thinking, _I'm thinking about it again!_

Yuna was doing a lot of erasing today. Riku saw her and showed her his drawing. "Don't worry--that part gets me, too." Upon close observation of Riku's drawing, she saw it was rather heavy-handed around the shorter lines, which made Zell's hair appear darker, but otherwise it was very good. He had not yet started on the tattoo.

"You're really good," she told him.

"It helps if I don't actually think of our model as a person," Riku said. "He's just a very lifelike _thing_."

Zell scowled and turned his head so the tattoo was not facing them. Riku grinned. "So..." He turned back to his sketchbook nonchalantly. Yuna braced herself for the worst. "...What was that thing your cousin said about Officer Loire?"

He never referred to Rikku by name. He claimed it was easier to keep things straight that way, and Yuna supposed it did, in a way; however she was mostly trying to find a way out of this conversation as quickly as possible.

"All we did was dance together," she answered, unable to force herself to lie and feeling that if she didn't say anything she would burst.

"I meant about genetics," Riku said.

That was very kind of him.

"What about you would be so unusual that our resident Ice King would read a book about it?"

"I have heterochromia," Yuna answered, feeling much more comfortable now.

"Really? Let me see."

She hesitantly lifted her chin. Riku had very bright turquoise eyes. Normally she would not do this, because she often felt strange compared to everyone else who had normal pairs of eyes, but she felt they were good enough friends for this. After a moment, he tilted his head slightly and remarked, "Now _that_ is cool. I wouldn't be too worried about it if Leon's reading about heterochromia. I think I might have done that myself, even."

Riku wasn't very threatening. Yuna thought about what would happen if she saw him reading a book about genetics after this and did not feel very alarmed. Then she felt better about herself. "Thanks, Riku," she said gratefully.

"No problem."

Yuna looked back down at her sketch and realized two things. One, she was not done with Zell Dincht's tattoo. Two, the model was still not looking at them.

"Hey, Zell, could you look over here for a second?" Riku asked. Zell gave a dignified 'hmph!' and did not comply. Riku sighed. "I guess I'll just have to work from memory, then." Zell turned around very quickly at that.

Sometimes Yuna wondered if Riku _was_ a genius under all that social ease.


	5. Trilliant

**Circles in the Dirt**  
_Trilliant_

-  
Leon was rather covertly using a computer in an office that was not his, but Laguna Loire's. The reason for this was because Laguna was not like Larxene, who would probably shoot Leon repeatedly and make it look like an accident if he did that. She was that type of person. Laguna didn't even mind it when people entered his office without permission, as long as they were 'researching something that would help them in future cases.'

Leon bore a grudging respect for the man, though he couldn't figure out why Ellone loved him so much. He referred to Laguna by his first name because he honestly did not think of Laguna as his father. It rather relieved him that the older man did not seem discouraged or hurt. Ellone had been hurt. But that was over between them now, and she no longer tried to force her perspective on Leon.

He felt terribly confused whenever he thought about the issue, and angry, and resentful as well. He knew, on one hand, that Laguna could not have predicted the incredibly complicated circumstances of his separation from the two siblings, yet at the same time he _had_ taken a long time to find them. It did not help that Ellone could remember him clearly and fondly, but Leon could not. He had been far too young for that.

Leon finished reading the twelfth site he had found on heterochromia and decided to stop looking. Several of those sites had been exclusively devoted to cats; he hadn't known that it would be this hard to find one specific piece of information. After asking Quistis, the librarian, for the technical term, he had been led on a maddening scavenger hunt chasing from one source to another, and he was too sick of it to continue.

At this point, Laguna entered the room and Leon tried hard not to look suspicious. "Well, hello, Squall!" The older man's reasoning for this was that if _Leon_ always referred to him as Laguna, then _he_ could use Leon's real name as well. It irked Leon, but he couldn't well _do_ anything about it as it made perfect sense, so he was attempting to get used to it, which worked most of the time. It didn't work this time as Laguna looked over his shoulder nosily.

"Heterochromia? Are you trying to identify a suspect?"

"No," Leon said stiffly. "I was just curious."

"Well, it's _very_ rare. And if you think heterochromia will make a search for a suspect easier, then think again! It doesn't."

Perhaps this applied to one of Laguna's cases. It probably did, since he had been on the force for twenty years and counting, though since his promotion he was often relegated to intelligence rather than field work.

"Anyway, Elle just called. She wanted to know if you were up to having dinner at her house, with me."

Leon shrugged. "Fine. It's fine with me." He closed the window on heterochromia quickly and strode out of the office. "See you, Laguna."

"Bye, Squall."

Leon heaved a long sigh and got ready to go home and change. It looked to be a very long night.

-

"Oh, hey Squall. Hi, Dad!" Ellone gave them both hugs and Leon felt very uncomfortable. Probably it was the basil he could smell cooking in Ellone's lasagna. Leon was not allergic to basil, per se, but if he ate a lot of it on an empty stomach he tended to break out in a rash all across his arms, especially his hands. It was why he liked wearing gloves.

Ellone knew this and tried to keep basil out of her family dinners, for his sake, but she couldn't help it when it came to lasagna. She said her favorite dish was just too bland and boring without basil. To compensate, she always served elaborate appetizers and desserts so her brother could at least go home on a full stomach; and so they wouldn't suspect anything, she did that every time--not just with basil dishes.

Leon thought she tried too hard.

-

"Squall? How are things going with Destiny High?" Ellone watched him carefully as he spooned some chocolate mousse into his plate.

"It's going perfectly well." He didn't know how to phrase the fact that one student, Paine, looked very suspicious to him, even though she did spend a lot of time with the harmless and very polite Yuna. Perhaps it was a front? "I don't know why they've stationed me there--it's a very well-kept school."

"Oh, you haven't heard?" Laguna was eating with gusto, but he stopped for a moment. He was already working through his lasagna. "There's this crew--we call them the Heartless--that have commited crimes uncomfortably close to Destiny High."

"Heartless?" Leon echoed flatly. It sounded like a stupid name for a gang, even if it did sound familiar. He suspected that he had heard people talking about it, but disregarded it as a topper story by some of the more easily bored line patrol officers, like Luxord. Luxord was always making things up.

"Yes. They rip out people's hearts."

Ellone grimaced.

"Well, so far they have ripped out _one_ person's heart." Laguna had a strong stomach and continued eating his lasagna, not noticing the fact that between the layers was Ellone's thick, trademark basil-laced sauce dripping tepidly back down onto his plate. "Only one witness, and that was a hysterical teenager, the victim's friend. We're not taking any chances--that's why we put _you_ there."

"Oh." Leon looked at Ellone, who gave him a timid smile back, and then he continued (albeit very slowly) eating his food. "That... explains a lot."

The rest of their dinner was pointedly shunted into less gory subjects, like Ellone's co-workers and friends at the Port Royal Hotel. Elizabeth and Will in particular was a hot subject, as they were planning to get married.

"Haven't they been _planning_ to get married for over a year now?" Leon asked. He remembered that one day, he had pulled someone over for speeding on quite a wet, slick, rainy day road and it turned out to be Will, on his way to the wedding in full dress. They had both forgiven him, saying that Will at the time of the arrest would have been several hours late anyway, for reasons the perpetually betrothed couple declined to explain, but Leon still felt guilty.

"Well, things come up." Ellone shot him a very wide smile and waved off his question breezily. "They're kind of unfortunate that way."


	6. Pink Tourmaline

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Pink Tourmaline_

Leon only realized that the hated family dinners were not as tense as he remembered when he lounged around away from the crowd in Donald's nephews' surprise birthday party and wished he was back at Ellone's house with Laguna eating basil-laced lasagna. He had known about the party for a while, as Donald and his girlfriend Daisy had been planning it at least a month before with such covertness it would have set conspiracy theorists to shame, but he had not known that he would be invited until today.

It was Sunday, one of those rare days when he was not in uniform, but he felt out of place anyway as he did not know Donald's family very well.

It was one of those bright, sunny spring days where everyone was throwing a birthday party or having a picnic. Leon could see the famous trio Sora, Riku, and Kairi on the other side of the park climbing trees. Quistis, the librarian, and her friend Rinoa were sitting next to each other on a bench, chatting animatedly. There was a black-haired woman with two children, both brown-haired, but one was a boy with curly hair and looked a bit skinny and drawn; the other was a healthier-looking girl, hair done in a neat braid with a bow. They were quickly joined by a blonde man with distinctive spiky blonde hair.

Leon was thankful that his birthday was in September, when it was too cold to go outside for very long. Seeing all these people with their families exhausted him.

"Hey... Laguna!" Donald yelled.

Surprised, Leon looked where Donald was waving and saw the older man in uniform, chatting with a blond man who looked vaguely familiar. He could not place where he had seen the man before because Laguna waved and came over, friend in tow.

"Hey, Donald! Leon!" Leon blinked in surprise. Laguna smiled and shrugged at him. "Seems like everyone's having a party today," he remarked. "Look at all these people in their bright summer clothes."

Leon picked at his black leather gloves and did not say a word when Donald and Laguna's friend looked at him.

Donald snorted. "And aren't _you_ a happy little camper, Leon!"

The policeman sighed and started walking over to the duck pond, smack in the middle of the park.

"Don't get lost!" Laguna called. He continued talking to his friend, Donald jumping in occasionally.

-

At first, when a policeman walked over to Uncle Cid and started talking, Yuna thought it was Leon again, interrogating him. But it turned out to be someone called Laguna. He looked an awful lot like Leon with black hair, especially from the back, but when introduced he smiled too much and seemed rather older than Leon. He had noticed her eyes and did not even comment, though he did look surprised. He was further delayed from any commenting when a familiar thickly accented voice yelled, "Hey, Laguna!"

Laguna brought Cid with him to Donald, who seemed to be throwing a birthday party for his three triplet nephews. It was a very big crowd. Meanwhile, Rikku and her brother Isaac were fighting over the last piece of apple pie and being quite vicious about it.

"Big bro!" Rikku wailed. "You _always_ get the last slice--give it here!"

"No way, sister!" They both laughed and Yuna smiled. She tried to finish off her sandwich--it was very good, being one of Cid's homemade picnic sandwiches, but the bread's crust was far too hard. Also it was too big. Her uncle tried to make them so she and Rikku could finish one, but it never worked, so Cid had resorted to simply cutting them in half.

"Um, Rikku?"

Her cousins stopped fighting momentarily. "Yeah, Yunie?" Rikku asked, all sugar and spice.

"I'm going to walk around for a while. If you need me, just yell."

Rikku nodded understandingly. "Okay. You have fun!" She turned and instantly went for her brother with a fork. "_Kyah!_"

Yuna thought that she would go to the duck pond and feed them some of the diamond-hard crust, if she could break off a piece at all. It was the only thing that really bothered her about Cid's sandwiches.

-  
Yuna stepped on the bridge timidly and it creaked, but held steady. She was not scared of falling in the water--there was a wooden rail on both sides designed specifically for keeping small children and timid people like herself from doing just that. There was a man in black leather with a strangely familiar fur-rimmed coat. He looked very elegant, standing all alone on the bridge with the dark gold of the sun lining his figure.

It was Leon. He was not in uniform.

"Hello," Yuna greeted him. She felt brave today, as it was very nice outside and Rikku was just close enough to hear her shout if she needed any help.

Leon jerked and no longer looked elegant. He looked surprised; then he relaxed when he saw Yuna.

"Oh, hello, Yuna."

Yuna drifted slowly closer until she got to the rail and looked over it. She could see the mottled brown female ducks swimming in a group and the striking green-fletched males hovering at the edges. She managed to break off a small piece of crust, and held her wrist over the rail very slowly, as if she had just gotten the idea in her head that moment.

Leon grabbed her wrist. "Don't."

"What?"

He let go and gestured to a sign. "We're not supposed to feed the ducks."

The sign said that feeding these ducks might make them dependent on people for food. Yuna had a horrible vision of ducks attacking her for the rest of the sandwich and blanched. "Oh... okay."

Leon nodded and rested his arms on the rail, looking elegant and vaguely tragic once more.

"..." Yuna cleared her throat and lifted the half of the sandwich she had been eating, holding out the other to Leon. "Would you like the other half?"

-  
_There were dishes steaming on the kitchen table, some homemade American apple pie and others as ethnic as baclava. The table was covered with them; soup tureens, tupperware, dishes covered over with tin foil. The wood groaned slightly under the pressure and the whole house was filled with the rich smells. Donald's birds clamored as they demanded to know what was going on._

_Leon entered the kitchen, checked for his keys, wallet, and cellphone, then pulled his gloves on and did not even look at the table, even though there was a whole turkey in the center. He went for the fridge._

_"...Aha! Sandwich." He grabbed the last roast beef sandwich and unwrapped it halfway, preparing to bite into it. Then Donald distracted him by falling down the stairs._

_"Ow! Ow! Ow!" He righted himself and pulled his second orange Converse on. "Leon, I'm going out for a while. It's nothing illegal, but just so you won't make sure and follow me, I'm inviting you to that birthday party I've been planning for my nephews. So now you owe me one. Don't eat any of the food, it's for the party. Daisy will kill me if so much as one forkful is missing."_

_Donald caught sight of Leon's sandwich and his eyes lit up. "Ooh! Sandwich!" He took it from Leon's unresisting hand, then immediately began munching on it contently. "Thanks!" he mumbled through a full mouth._

_Leon scowled._

-  
Leon realized he was scowling at Yuna and stopped. She looked intimidated. "Actually, a sandwich would be nice. Thanks."

She handed him the half and looked relieved. Leon bit through the rather tough bread and tasted pastrami, with a lot of garlic, but not basil. He decided that, while roast beef still remained his favorite, this one came pretty close and would have beaten it if it had not been for the obscenely hard crust.

Yuna leaned on the rail, finishing her sandwich, and looked very small. Leon took his gloves off so he would be able to better handle his half and rested them on the rail. "Could you make sure they don't fall in the water?" he asked. "I've just broken them in."

"Sure." Yuna reached over his arms and picked up the gloves, them laid them lengthwise along the rail and smoothed them out a bit.

They watched the ducks gliding on the surface of the pond and preening themselves. It looked odd with their wide beaks. There were no ducklings, as far as they could see. It remained silent for a few more minutes until Yuna's family called her over and she excused herself quickly, running with a light step back to her picnic.

Leon started as she stood next to Rikku, who looked wounded and as blonde as ever. The man talking to Laguna had the same blonde hair--so _that_ was where Leon had seen him before.

-

Laguna smiled at the quiet brown-haired girl. She looked like she felt out of place arranged amongst all these blondes. What was most strange about her was not her hair, however--it was the fact that one eye was as green as Rikku's and one eye was blue, which had probably come from her mother.

Cid nodded and told him, "Yeah, Yuna's a sweetheart."

"Rikku, let go of my pie!" Cid's son Isaac was fighting over the last slice with his sister.

"She has heterochromia," Laguna remarked.

"Yup. One eye from her mom and one from her dad. At least, that's what we've been telling her."

"Did she get her hair from her mother, too?" Laguna asked.

His friend grinned. "She's my niece. And she looks like _both_ her parents."

"Oh." Laguna had some very strong suspicions as to why Yuna was alone with her uncle's close family--he _was_ a policeman, after all--but decided not to say anything.

"Sometimes I think she got _too_ quiet after she moved in with us," Cid rambled. "But, I guess she's gotten over it. She was always kind of shy."

At this point Laguna heard a familiar, thickly accented voice calling him and turned to see Donald waving furiously, with Squall in a corner looking bored. The two of them went to the other party, and Laguna made some small talk until his son left abruptly to watch the ducks.

Not too long after that, Yuna joined the younger officer on the bridge with something in her hands. She tried to drop something into the water and Donald cackled when Leon stopped her and gestured to the sign.

"Ha! She tried to feed the ducks."

Laguna had a horrible vision of a swarm of ducks attacking the girl for the remaining part of her sandwich and balked. Then he relaxed when she instead gave Squall half the sandwich, though Cid looked irritated.

"Dammit, I knew the girls couldn't finish those. But I can't stop _making_ them that way!"

"Aww, isn't that cute," Laguna said. Yuna had taken Squall's gloves and set them lengthwise so they wouldn't fall into the water. She had even patted them slightly and smoothed them over. Cid scowled at him.

"She's too young for your son and she'll _always_ be too young. So don't even _think_ about it!"

"_Oww!!_" Rikku shrilled, attracting everyone's attention. "Yuna! Brother _sporked_ me!"

"Damn it, Isaac, don't stab your sister!" Cid ran over to his family, along with Yuna, as Donald and Laguna watched the scene.

Finally Donald spoke. "It's going to take _years_ for them to get together," he informed Laguna dryly. "They're so _law-abiding_."

"I bet it'll take them a month," Laguna countered casually. His son was putting his gloves back on, looking elegant and faintly tragic once more. Donald scoffed.

"Optimist."


	7. Fire Opal

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Fire Opal_

-  
"I bet," someone challenged grandly. "It will take them _one hour and forty-five minutes!_"

Donald smacked his friend on the back of the head. "Damn it, Goofy!"

"Ow!" The lanky man rubbed the sore spot fearfully, then offered, "Well, that's how long it takes in a movie by today's standards."

"Donald, did you just _curse_ in front of the _triplets_?" Donald's girlfriend, Daisy, had her hands on her hips and did not look amused.

"Oh, no, sweetheart, you must have... heard me wrong somehow." Donald thought. "I said 'darn it.'"

She gave him a piercing look and turned away. "Just be thankful they're making such a ruckus, or else they would have heard you."

"Whew!" Donald rubbed his temple, relieved. Laguna smirked and elbowed him playfully.

"So, Donald, can I guess at who's wearing the pants in this relationship?"

"No!!"

Laguna and Goofy laughed as their friend looked outraged. They were distracted by Leon returning from the bridge at the duckpond, with sandwich in hand.

"Oh, Leon--hey, Leon!" Goofy waved cheerfully and was met with indifference.

"Hey."

"So, where'd you get that sandwich?" Laguna asked slyly.

His son looked surprised at the tone. Then a black-clad hand waved vaguely in the direction of Cid's picnic, where there appeared to be a stern lecture spouting from the patriarch about how stabbing one's sister with a spork was not excusable, _ever_.

"Yuna. The brownhaired girl. I kind of see why she gave it to me, now..." Leon munched on it and looked like he was having a hard time chewing.

"So why are you still eating it?" Donald asked pointedly.

"Because it's kind of _good._" Leon swallowed it, hard. "Regardless."

Laguna, Donald, and Goofy gave each other covert glances as Leon wandered off on his lonesome. Then Laguna grinned. "Say, Goofy," he began innocently. "Are you willing to put _money_ on that bet you made?"

"This is _ridiculous_!" Donald snapped. "Not only is he _your_ son, but all he said was that the sandwich she foisted off on him was 'kind of good, regardless.'" Donald had deepened his voice in an approximation of Leon's tone. "There's no reason for us to be putting money on anything!"

"Aw, shucks." Laguna thought Goofy was talking to them, but the man pointed in the direction of the duckpond concernedly. "She looks kind of sad, doesn't she?"

Amazed, the other two followed his gaze to the duckpond to see Yuna, looking somewhat mournful as she stood all alone on the bridge. Then they looked back at each other with renewed vigor.

"Twenty bucks!"

"Thirty."

"Psh." Donald turned his nose up, still thinking it was silly of them.

"C'mon, Donald," Laguna cajoled in a sing-song voice. "You know you want to. You _live_ with him! You can monitor his every move."

"Fine! Forty!"

"Done!" Laguna was glad he hadn't gone last. Otherwise he would have been forced to top the other sums. "None of us tells anyone about this. Especially not Squall."

"Who?"

"Um." Laguna thought for a second. He knew Leon hated his birth name. However, he was rescued when his radio buzzed harshly and Luxord's voice came on. Laguna picked it up as Leon looked in their direction. "Could you repeat that, Luxord?"

"_Kssht!_" There was a moment of staticy silence. "_Not_ lying! There's another victim--heart's been cut out!"

Laguna looked at his son.

"Should I go with you?" the younger officer asked intently.

"No." Laguna started walking. "You're not on duty--stay here and have fun."

Donald snorted. Laguna admitted privately that the last part had not been the right thing to say. Leon would definitely not have fun in a moment like this--he would stay silent for the rest of the day, perhaps getting irritated more easily than usual. He would worry and fester as his anxiety grew until he got back in uniform and could see things for himself. And he would feel useless most of all.

It was the sort of thing Laguna would be doing himself.

-  
Laguna stood edgily at the scene of the crime, in a back alley only ten or fifteen blocks away from the park. The smell of blood was heavy and it mostly came from the mutilated corpse, innards spewing out messily and giving a further stink to the air.

Zexion, the youngest one there, did not seem edgy or squeamish as he knelt by the body. He stood up and said coolly, "It's consistent with the first one. By the state of the internal organs, the heart appears to have been pulled out through a long cut in the abdominal cavity. Signs of a struggle, but no evidence towards the identity of the killer just yet."

_I am __**so**__ glad I'm not Zexion,_ Laguna thought. Touching or even getting _close_ to something like this would give him the creeps. It was different with automobile accidents in which someone had died--they were usually not disembowelled.

"Hff." Luxord looked jittery, even though his English accented voice betrayed very little. He tossed Laguna a roll of caution tape and said, "Why don't _you_ rope it off, Laguna?"

"All right." Laguna started junctioning it off and, as he passed close to the body and Zexion's quiet, kneeling form, felt something that could not exactly be called squeamish. He felt guilty that this had happened in the first place, so close to the park, and on such a nice day. He observed the victims features: a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, with streaming brown hair. He didn't recognize her, but he felt it could have been anyone.

This could have been Raine, Laguna thought, trying not to focus on the long cut in her abdomen. Or Ellone, or even Squall.

The thing about Laguna was that he always thought about his family, no matter how self-sufficient they were or how strong they had gotten to be. And whenever he thought about people who were not so strong, he felt even worse. Laguna thought of Yuna, standing alone on the bridge in the park, and his worry extended to her automatically.

She was an orphan. She would need all the help she could get.

-  
Rikku shivered and clutched at Yuna's shoulders as they watched the news in the living room. "Yuna?" she asked, sounding chilled to the bone.

"Yes, Rikku?" Yuna whispered.

"I'm scared that a maniac will come into the living room and cut out our hearts."

"Me, too!" Yuna clutched back and wondered how many people were doing this.

Then they both screamed as Cid and Isaac came into the living room noisily.

-  
"Sora, Riku, I'm scared."

Riku stared blankly into the television as various gory images flickered across the screen. He looked faint, and Sora looked rather scared as well.

"Hold me!" Kairi whimpered.

Riku's arm automatically went around her shoulders and Sora clutched her hands.

-  
"Rinny, I love you!" Seifer and Rinoa clutched, looking rather mismatched with each other. Quistis looked bored and condescending.

"There is no _axe murderer_ coming to rip out our hearts!" she informed them logically, standing in the doorway. "You two are being immature."

Rinoa thought for a moment, then held out one arm and offered innocently, "You can come on the couch with us, Quistis."

Quistis rolled her eyes, sat down on the couch, and put an arm around Rinoa. "I refuse to clutch or be clutched, though. By _either_ of you!"

-  
Shuyin was clutching his phone so hard that he was losing circulation in his fingers. "Lenne, answer your phone!"

The answering machine came on. The blitzer threw the phone back down and picked it up again, dialing fast.

It rang three times. She did not answer the phone.

"Lenne! _Pick up your phone!_ Lenne!"

The television was still on, showing pictures that were did not have not of the victim's face. But he could see long brown hair, hair that went past the shoulders at the very least. He could not take chances, but...

Shuyin's voice was getting shrill with desperation.

"Lenne! _Lenne!_"


	8. Blue Amber

**Circles in the Dirt**  
_Blue Amber_

-  
Rikku, Yuna, and Paine were walking to school together. Normally Paine drove to school--she was eighteen and she could now drive alone--but her car had broken down over the weekend. Yuna could drive, but she didn't mind walking with Rikku. Cid had a stern policy about driving, with Rikku in particular, so that was why she was not learning until she was eighteen. Privately Yuna thought it had been smart of her uncle.

"Oh... hi, Lenne!" Yuna waved to the other senior across the street, and Lenne waved back cordially. She was wearing a distinctive sleeveless purple shirt with light blue ruffles--she said it was her favorite.

Yuna was friends with Lenne but tended to get very shy around her, mostly because the other girl was a lot less withdrawn than herself yet still very polite and respectful. She was a promising singer; Yuna could not even get on stage out of stage fright. She was rather taller than Yuna as well. Yuna looked up to Lenne a lot.

Lenne crossed the street to get to their side and started talking. Then, just as the light turned green, a voice rang out desperately.

"Lenne! Oh my god! _Lenne!_" Shuyin, Lenne's boyfriend of two years, barrelled across the street and almost knocked Lenne over with a hug.

Shuyin was blonde, with feathered hair, and he looked an awful lot like Tidus. He had even been on the soccer team with Tidus before the Germany thing happened, fueling the blonde soccer-playing stereotype. However, the difference between the two was that Shuyin, unlike Tidus, was extremely intense and perhaps a _little_ unstable--especially with Lenne. It could get awkward when he was talking to her and didn't seem to register the other people around them.

"_I thought you were dead!_" he sobbed.

Yes, it was one of those days.

Lenne managed to wrest herself out of Shuyin's grip partially and sent the other three an apologetic look. "Shuyin, sweetheart," she started very gently. "Why would you think I was dead?"

"You haven't been watching TV?" The blond let go and she looked relieved. "The news! It said--and _you weren't answering your phone!_"

"I _told_ you on Friday--my bunny Thumper chewed through just about every wire in the house. He even got my DSL line."

"Ouch!" Rikku commented.

"I haven't had any phone, TV, or Internet for the past three days. And I'm still getting things up. So what's on the news?"

"The serial killer who cuts people's hearts out!" Both Rikku and Shuyin said this.

"Jinx!" Rikku caroled triumphantly.

Shuyin was not listening. "And the victim had _long brown hair!_"

"Oh!" Lenne's hair was famously long. She fiddled with it carefully. Then Shuyin hugged her again. It was still very much like a tackle, even though they were one step away from each other. Shuyin was a very good soccer player.

"Until we get to school, I am _not_ letting you go!"

Yuna was glad that Tidus was almost the exact opposite of Shuyin personality wise. His hugs had been massive, too, but he tended to give them out when he was happy, not when he was relieved or in desperate need of attention and comfort. Or both. Shuyin was rather clingy.

-  
Yuna was feeling extremely depressed today, more than usual. At first she thought it was because Shuyin and Lenne had gotten her thinking about Tidus, which made sense. But she would have gotten over it by now. Instead, she was feeling tired and near tears. Then in her second class she caught sight of a calendar and, upon seeing the date, realized it was around that time of the month and she felt worse than ever. She always felt horrible the week before her period.

At lunch it was not much better. Yuna wished she had not brought one of Cid's sandwiches; she wanted chocolate instead. It tended to make her feel better. She felt like she could eat a whole box right now.

"Yuna, you seem depressed," Rikku said. "Want some of my chocolate?"

"Yes please!"

"Whoa!" Her cousin stood back as she grabbed for it. "Yuna, is it that time again?"

"_Yes!_" Yuna stopped unwrapping the chocolate and took a deep breath. She felt like crying again. It didn't work and she started shaking very hard. Paine looked alarmed and Rikku fumbled for a moment before deciding on a nice, neutral, caring, cousin-like thing to say.

"Aww, Yunie, you know it's not that bad--"

"I--" Yuna wiped her eyes. "I'm going to--" She couldn't finish and gathered up her things, running for the bathroom.

"We won't tell a soul!" Rikku yelled after her.

Yuna decided to thank Rikku and Paine later. She felt selfish enough to not feel guilty.

-  
It was near the end of lunch and Yuna felt much better. She carefully looked at her eyes and splashed her face to get rid of the tearstains. Her eyes didn't look too red, but she was horribly hungry.

The bell rang just as she stepped outside and she felt faint. She had gym right after lunch and she could barely walk on an empty stomach, much less _run_ the quarter lap Mr. Leiden assigned to them every day. Knowing her teacher, she would probably have to run another lap on the track for being late, so Yuna decided that if she was going to be late she might as well eat her uncle's sandwich. Now she was glad she had brought it.

"Is it just me, or are you always running when I see you go to class?"

She turned at the voice, sandwich still in hand. It was strange of Officer Loire to start conversations without his customary 'What are you doing out of class?', but... there he was, right behind her in his uniformed glory. It was not much of a change from his normal clothes, except for the lack of a fur ruff.

"Er..."

"Because you don't _seem_ like a late student," he continued.

"I'm not," Yuna said quickly. "I was..." She looked at her sandwich, which had only two bites in it. It was clearly homemade, so he would not believe her if she said she had been stuck in line. Besides, she had given him one half on the weekend, and Cid's sandwiches were quite distinctive. She tried to think of another excuse.

Leon tilted his head, as if expecting an answer in the next thirty seconds.

"Busy," she finished.

It was vague enough to work: Leon nodded and continued walking languidly through the hallways. By now they were empty, so his footsteps resounded on the faint patterned tiles until Yuna started running and overshadowed him with her own quick, nervous tread.

When she couldn't hear him anymore, she realized she had never overshadowed anyone and looked back, but he was gone.

Even though she finished her sandwich by the time she got to the gym, Yuna still felt very sad. She remembered how tragic Leon had looked on the bridge and wondered if he was always like that when he was alone. She decided, as she apologized to Mr. Leiden profusely for being late, that he probably was. That made him definitely not like Tidus.

_In fact,_ Yuna realized with a feeling of doom in her chest: _Leon is more like me._

-  
Yuna's last class of the day was art. Not only was it a relief to be amongst people who were mostly more focused on drawing than talking, but she would be able to spend time with Naminé Almasy, a sophomore and the resident creative prodigy. The girl was quiet and withdrawn, much like Yuna, and though she sometimes worried about Naminé being a bit _too_ quiet it was rather nice to be with someone who wouldn't overshadow her in conversations. When she was with Naminé she felt like neither of them quite existed, which was strangely reassuring.

"Hello, Yuna," Naminé said. Yuna felt acutely guilty that she only really spent time with Naminé when she was depressed, but the other girl didn't seem to mind. She had a twin brother named Roxas, though they were not identical, and she was good friends with Kairi and Riku.

"Hi, Naminé," Yuna greeted her quietly. She took a peek over Naminé's shoulder. The blonde could work with just about every medium, but she liked using colored pencils and affecting a very childlike, simple style. When asked, Naminé often said that she was making up for lost time.

"Where's your drawing of Zell?" Yuna asked. Naminé drew a lot, seconding her lost time excuse, which meant she ran through sketchbooks very quickly. She bought her own materials.

Naminé smiled and flipped back several pages. There was a plain graphite sketch of Zell's face, which was nearly perfect and only needed shading to be finished. Then, for fun, she had used the other half of the page to draw Zell in her trademark colored pencils. Yuna rather liked Naminé's style because it wasn't so intimidating. She said she could draw so much because it was distressingly easy and fun, which Yuna believed.

"The trick to drawing like me," Naminé remarked, "Is to keep everything in its proper place."

Zell's tattoo was still perfectly proportioned, scrawling across his face like a wide, sideways smile. None of the lines were uneven or scraggly, and the colors were all dead-on. There was nothing actually _outside_ the lines.

So, Yuna thought, it was not _distressingly_ easy to draw like Naminé but _deceptively_ so.

That made her feel inadequate and she wanted to cry.

Again.

-  
The strange thing about Naminé's brother Roxas was that he could get very protective when it came to her--almost overly so. After school, Yuna walked into the main hallway with Rikku and Paine to see a crowd gathered around Roxas and Riku, who were having a shouting match. Or rather, Roxas was just yelling at Riku for supposedly shoving his sister down the stairs, while Naminé inched closer to Kairi and took her hand.

Riku was being very calm about it, which made Roxas even angrier. "You don't understand!" the blonde said, quite viciously. "She's small! You could have hurt her!"

"Roxas, I don't think--"

"You only think that because Naminé didn't say anything. _I_ saw it! You _shoved_ her! She isn't that strong!" This was clearly embarrassing to Naminé.

"Look. Kairi is the same size as her." Riku gestured serenely to his friend. He was right. Even though Naminé's head was bowed sharply, their shoulders were at the same level.

Roxas struggled. "She's not _Naminé_!" he burst out. Yuna thought the shorter boy had a point, too. The red hair made Kairi seem more robust. "_Say_ something!" he snapped at his sister. She shook her head, and there was a strange mix of both the embarassment Yuna had seen earlier and a thread of fear.

"What is going _on_ here?" Leon had come over of his own devices to the scene. Roxas babbled something, mostly about how Riku was an idiot and how he'd shoved Naminé. Riku did not seem alarmed.

"Trust me, I just brushed past her. It wasn't anything _near_ a shove."

"He keeps _saying_ that!" Roxas sounded rather hysterical and desperate. Yuna thought of Shuyin, clinging to his girlfriend after the death scare; only Roxas had no real excuse for this. But Leon took it in stride.

"Where's Naminé? What does she have to say about this?"

Naminé stepped out from behind Kairi and Sora and said quietly, "Riku didn't shove me."

"You're--_you're taking his side!_" Roxas exclaimed, sounding more than a little bit broken.

'I'm being honest, Roxas. Riku didn't shove me." She looked her twin brother in the eye. "You just imagined it."

"So there's nothing to see here, then?" Leon started shooing the students away. "All right, go home. All of you." It was quite a sizeable crowd, mostly because of Riku.

Roxas stormed off in the direction of the library, not the exit. He was getting quite erratic lately--Yuna didn't know what to think of it. In intensity and devotion to Naminé, he struck eerie parallels to Shuyin.

"What is going _on_ with Roxas?" Rikku asked. "He blows up about nothing at Riku and his sister is best friends with Kairi!"

"Maybe he's worried about her?" Yuna tried. But Roxas' protectiveness had never gotten in the way of his friendship with Riku, even though it was somewhat competitive.

"Maybe it's that serial killer going around." The silver-haired boy had lingered along with his friends. Naminé had gone after Roxas.

"Yeah!" Rikku nodded her approval. "Look at Shuyin--I'm surprised he hasn't locked Lenne up or handcuffed her to his wrist or something! That totally works for Roxas."

"But," Yuna pointed out. Everyone turned to her. "Roxas has been acting like this for a while. He blew up at a teacher last month and got suspended for it. Remember?"

"Stress, then," Riku reasoned.

"Or maybe we are all going in circles around it and Roxas is going insane." That was Paine, of course, effectively ending the conversation.

They all cringed. It seemed like a very Roxas thing to do--if it hadn't, or if Paine had been joking, then they would have laughed. But it did, and she wasn't.

"What are _you_ all still doing here?" Leon asked. "Get going."

-  
Quistis looked up from her desk as Roxas wandered in, seeming hurt. "Roxas, is something wrong?"

"Quistis, I need to talk to my brother."

"You have his number," she said carefully. She wondered what was going on. Naminé drifted in behind him.

"I don't have my phone. Can I use yours?"

The librarian shrugged and handed him her cellphone. "In case you're wondering, he's under the name--" Roxas started dialing and stepped outside with Naminé, shutting the door.

That was odd. But, perhaps he didn't want her to listen to him pour out his troubles. Both Roxas and his brother were sensitive about that.

Quistis closed the door to her office and resolved not to listen.

-  
"Seifer."

"Little bro! How's it going?" The reception was bad at school, but Seifer's staticy voice sounded cheerful. "Why are you calling from Quistis' phone?"

"You... you saw the news last night, right?"

Naminé looked alarmed.

"Yeah." Silence.

"Seifer..." Roxas lowered his voice and cupped his hand over his mouth. "I think Dad has something to do with it. And Mom knows."


	9. Princess

**Circles in the Dirt**

_Princess  
_-

Roxas hung up before he could hear Seifer's reaction and turned sharply to Namine. She was wearing a long-sleeved purple windbreaker that did not go well with the white dress she usually wore. She shrank from the intensity of his gaze as he changed tack and said sharply, "Namine, if you stood up for yourself they wouldn't _hit _you so much." He twisted to open the door, but then a voice rang out across the hallway.

"Who are you talking about?" Leon had startled them both by showing up so quickly, but Namine shook her head.

"Nobody." Then she grabbed Roxas' arm and almost disappeared behind her brother. One purple sleeve was all Leon could see.

The policeman did not look convinced. He went over to Namine, took a wrist at random, and pushed up the too-long sleeve. On her forearm was a long, spreading bruise, like a cloud. Leon's eyes narrowed icily. "_How long has this been going on?_"

"For _ages!_" Roxas exploded, seeming relieved and angry at the same time.

"It was an accident," Namine said at the same time. Her eyes nervously fluttered back down to the ground and she pulled her arm out of Leon's loose grip.

Roxas stepped forward. "I have something else I need to tell you."

"No, Roxas, don't--"

"I can tell you who's behind the murders," he said, overpowering his sister's meek cry. Leon nodded, but then Roxas became rather hesitant. "Marluxia... and Larxene..." the student swallowed. "Almasy."

"_Almasy?_"

Leon thought about Seifer Almasy, who he had gone to high school with a very long time ago. He thought about Larxene Almasy, who was the same as Laguna in rank but with much more of a mean streak. He thought about how Larxene and Seifer were both blonde and he thought about how Roxas and Namine were blonde. He thought about how very uncommon that surname was.

Almasy.

Marluxia and Roxas and Seifer and Larxene and Namine Almasy.

_That's..._

"But that's _your_ last name!" Leon said. "_Both_ of yours!"

Namine clutched at Roxas' shoulders with the ease of much practice and buried her head in his shoulder.

"Larxene is on the police force," he continued, drawing his conclusions. "Well, that explains why you never told anyone."

"A month ago, when the first murder happened, there was a package wrapped in dark paper on the porch. I didn't pay attention to it because it was small, but Namine said it looked wet and it smelled funny. Dad picked it up and told us not to worry about it."

Everyone knew that the victims had gotten their hearts ripped out, via a long cut down the center of the abdomen. Leon could not believe it, but Namine was still crying.

"Yesterday a man in black showed up at the door with the same sort of package and asked us if our parents were home, but before we could answer Dad took it and we saw him go into the basement, so... so we followed him. We looked in through the door, and then we saw it. There was a glass jar on the top shelf just big enough to hold one of them, and... we..." Roxas struggled. "We couldn't see where the other one was."

The boy could not seem to go on. He turned towards Namine and let her cry on his shoulder.

"It's a good thing you told me this _now!_" Leon exclaimed. He was going to throw their abusive, murderous, widespread corruption-causing parents into jail for this, for _years_. Possibly for _life_. He hated serial killers and he hated child abusers. He had once thought he was lucky to be an orphan, during one angry summer day, and he remembered that feeling just now. Roxas and Namine did not deserve this.

Then Roxas stood up straight, remembering something. "I have to give Quistis her phone back."

"Namine?" A very high-pitched, familiar sounding voice rang out. They all turned and Namine stopped crying abruptly, as if she had been hit. "Sweetheart? Why are you crying?"

_Damn it--__**Larxene!**_ Both Larxene and her husband Marluxia were walking towards them. Roxas bristled visibly, and Namine seemed torn between crying again and holding it in. Leon couldn't blame her. As the two adults made to take a hold of one child each, he pulled out his gun.

"Stop it! Let them go!"

Larxene looked serious, and more than a little bit deadly. She was not currently in uniform like he was and she was shorter than him, but... "Are you attempting to go over my _head_, Leon Loire? A _superior_? I'm surprised. Normally _you're_ the most anal about rules and regulations."

"Let go of Namine!" Roxas snarled. Marluxia had taken his daughter's shoulders and was steering her away slowly. As Roxas struggled out of Larxene's grasp, she grabbed him again and he winced.

"Quiet!" Her blue eyes flicked to Leon and she ordered him just as sharply, "Leon, put down your gun."

"You can stop crying now, Namine," Marluxia said smoothly, in sharp contrast to his wife's voice. His hair was an odd sort of brown, almost pink. Probably that was how Roxas had gotten darker hair than his mother and siblings. "Dad's here. You've got nothing to cry about."

Leon couldn't focus quite clearly, going against the grain of his being and at the same time faced with two targets. But he resisted the urge to follow Larxene's order and snapped, "Yes, I'm going over your head. But right now, I'm talking to a _criminal_ who stood by and let her _husband_ abuse her children! Let them go!"

Marluxia was getting farther and farther away now.

"Namine!" Roxas yelled.

"Marluxia doesn't know his own strength sometimes," Larxene said very calmly. "If he had been _abusing_ her, I would have stopped it."

"That's bull!" Roxas retorted. "Half the time _you're_ the one--"

"_Quiet!_" She dug her fingers into his shoulder.

"Roxas, listen to your mother."

Leon was torn between watching Marluxia retreat and keeping his eyes on Larxene. And then he realized she'd been planning this--she knew how he'd react.

"All right, then." Larxene, still holding Roxas, turned on a heel and started walking.

"Don't _move!_"

She stopped and smiled at him.

"You're so _noble_, Leon," Larxene taunted. "You think that because you are the black-clad _hero_, everyone will pay attention to you and criminals will fall to their knees. I suppose you also think that a pretty little woman like me is too frail to do anything but desk work after fifteen years at your station. How do you know _I_ don't have a gun on me as well?"

Leon seethed inwardly, then lowered his gun. He didn't know if Larxene was a quick draw or not. Everyone mostly talked about how much they didn't like her.

Suddenly she stopped, grabbed something out of Roxas' hand, and threw it at him. "Here." It flashed past his head in a salmon-pink blur. Leon let it drop to the ground with a painful-sounding clatter, but he picked it up and realized it was Quistis' cell phone.

"You're _not_ going to get away with this!" he barked, unable to think of anything else. He clutched at the cell phone so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Oh, yes I will, Squall." Larxene continued walking and did not even turn back when Leon blanched, but she probably knew what he'd done because then she sang out cheerfully, "Well, of _course_ I know your name! Doesn't _Laguna_ use it all the time?"

Leon felt the urge to blame Laguna but fought it fiercely, thinking of all the other ways she could have learned his name. She was a police officer with fifteen years of experience--she could have done an inquest, and she probably had when he'd started working. She struck him as the sort to keep tight tabs on the people she worked with. Leon all of a sudden stopped blaming his father and felt seriously violated.

"I don't care! I _am_ going to expose you two!"

"With who? With Laguna?"

Why did she keep bringing his father into this?

-  
Larxene shut the door of Roxas' room firmly. "Now, you two stay in there and think about what you did. All right?"

"I hate you!" came Roxas' muffled snarl.

She opened the door suddenly. "Repeat that, please?"

Namine shook her head quickly. "R-Roxas didn't say anything, Mom."

"Yes I--"

"No, you _didn't!_" Namine cried, overpowering her brother. "Just stop it! Stop it, Roxas!"

Roxas fell silent. Larxene nodded, satisfied. "Good. You should listen to your sister more often, Roxas. A little silence goes a long way." She turned around and added as an afterthought, "If you try and tell anyone else, there'll be a lot more than a little discipline in store for you two."

"We won't tell anyone," Namine said, sounding weak and teary as she clutched her brother's shoulders. Even though her hand was now applying pressure to a recently formed bruise, Roxas didn't pay attention to it.

"You are such a _dear._ You know that?" Larxene looked at them again. "My sweet little Namine never tells anyone _anything_. You don't even tell _Roxas_ what Marluxia does to you sometimes."

"Namine?" Roxas looked at his sister, concerned. She started shaking again. "Namine, what does Dad _do_ to you?!"

"Nothing," she whispered.

"That's right," Larxene said. She shut the door.

-  
Leon felt tired and antsy. He coulsn't stop thinking about Larxene and how she was higher in the rankings than he was. And how she'd used his real name, and blamed Laguna on it, and exploited him more in ten minutes than he'd ever been exploited in his life.

After returning Quistis' cell phone to her--the librarian had sequestered herself in her office, tying up a few loose ends of paperwork, and had not heard anything that went on--Leon had barrelled into his car with the singleminded ferocity of a lion. This was some serious business. Larxene was probably bribing, or even more likely blackmailing the people working on the heartless case. Zexion, maybe--the young scientist would be extremely important to Larxene if she wanted to cover her tracks.

He wondered why Larxene and Marluxia were doing this. Seifer was their son, but the freakishly tall blonde man didn't seem like the type to be involved in wide-spread corruption of the force. He did not even _like_ the police--and Leon suddenly realized why. They had never been close friends, more like cheerful rivals. Or as cheerful as Leon could have gotten, at eighteen without any family besides his sister. When Leon had started working at the police station, their relationship had gotten rather colder and a lot more strained.

_This. Is. So. __**Complicated!**_ Leon rubbed his temples at a red light and tried to stop thinking about it. He wondered how he would phrase this to Laguna.

_Laguna, you know Larxene Almasy? Well, her children just found two human hearts in their basement. We're pretty sure they're behind this. Also, Larxene abuses her daughter on a regular basis and--_

"_NO!_"

Leon would definitely need a search warrant for this. Larxene would not allow him into her house for ten seconds without one, and with her status she might very well pull some strings so a warrant would never be granted to him.

"Damn it--_I hate you, Larxene!_"

As he turned a corner, Leon caught sight of two men in black suits and a familiar, shorter silhouette with chin-length hair and a dark blue pleated skirt. It looked rather suspicious, and he felt rather useless, so he decided to settle this quickly. She looked uncomfortably like she was cowering, in an eerie parallel to Namine being dragged away by her father. And he saw that one of them had spiky red hair that would put a bonfire to shame.

Even if he hadn't been in search of a situation he could handle, that red hair would have stopped him in an instant. The officer pulled over and got out of the car. "Yuna? What's going on?"


	10. Black Diamond

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Black Diamond_

-  
Yuna waved goodbye sadly to Paine as her friend split from the group on the way home. "Bye, Paine."

"Bye, best buddy in the world!" Rikku waved.

"Bye," Paine replied. "Yuna, try not to get too depressed. It's never as bad as it seems."

She disappeared behind a street corner. Yuna remembered five months ago, when Tidus had just left. She had spilled out all her worries to Paine at the time about how she was destined to die all alone in a small, unmarked grave. Paine had not spoken much back then, but Yuna had not wanted sisterly advice so much as someone who would just _listen_ to her for a change. If she had wanted advice, or distractions, or both, she would have gone to Rikku.

Then Cid pulled up in his clunky blue car and yelled, "Rikku!"

"Pops!" Rikku yelled back. "What's up?"

"Sweetie, you got a dentist appointment. You were supposed to be there ten minutes ago--get in!"

Rikku hopped in. "Yuna, you got your keys?"

Yuna nodded slowly as Cid said to her, "Be careful, Yunie--_don't_ let people take advantage of you!"

Then he sped off. Yuna knew that Cid had not left her alone on the street due to preference of his own daughter. He had left her because the house was ten minutes away by foot, and the dentist's office was very nearly all the way across town. He could not drop Yuna off because then Rikku would be even later, and she had a bad record as it was. Yuna could not go with them because she had homework to do, which took several hours.

Still, Yuna felt very alone. She thought about what Paine had said, in an unusually helpful change of mood, and decided her friend had been right. Very, very right.

"Okay. _It is going to be okay._" Yuna felt the urge to cry for no reason, fought it fiercely, and won. Surprisingly. "As long as I don't meet anyone who tries to take advantage of me!"

-  
Someone was walking behind her. Yuna hitched her bag higher on her shoulders and caught a glimpse, as she did, of two very tall men in black suits. One was a powerful looking black man, but the other was more on the skinny side with striking red hair. She found herself terrified of both of them, but the redhead in particular stood out because he looked suspiciously casual. At least the other one had a no-nonsense carriage which made sense with his suit.

"Now what's such a pretty little thing like you doing all alone on these streets?"

In fact, she would take the no-nonsense one of the pair no matter what else was offered. She didn't want to be alone with the redhead.

He was elbowed by his partner. "Manwhore!" came the vicious reply.

She fidgeted inwardly as the pair closed the gap.

"I apologize for my partner's incivility," said the no-nonsense half of the pair. "My name is Rude Murdoch." Yuna thought that was ironic. "And this is Reno Kinneas. We're part of the FBI."

"So what's your name?" Reno asked. He was getting closer to her, which made her feel very claustrophobic.

"Yuna... Highwind," she replied. Reno was _very_ tall. Rude was just strongly built.

Someone pulled over and a familiar brunet police officer stepped out of the car, rescuing her from this conversation. "Yuna? What's going on?"

"Nothing," Yuna said. "They just asked me my name."

Leon took one look at the redhead and scowled, obviously recognizing him. "_Reno Kinneas._"

"_Squall Leonhart Loire,_" Reno retorted. Then he paused. "I have to admit, your name sounds a lot cooler."

Leon bristled. "Why is everyone _calling_ me that today?!"

"Oh, let's just go!" Rude sounded disgusted with his partner's lack of finesse. "Sorry to intrude on you, Miss Highwind." He grabbed hold of Reno's arm and started dragging him away, with much practiced ease. Leon watched them go with a hard look in his eye, then turned to Yuna.

"Yuna, if you are ever alone with Reno Kinneas, kick him. _Hard._ He likes to take advantage of people."

"But I don't think I'll ever see him again," Yuna reasoned timidly.

"If you think that, you probably will," he retorted. Then he looked around. "Why are you alone? Where's your cousin?"

"She had a dentist appointment. She was late."

"And... Paine?"

"...She takes a different way home." There was a strained thread behind Leon's emotionless drone that Yuna did not miss. Obviously he did not trust Paine. He looked at her, then at the retreating backs of the FBI agents.

"Get in the car," he said finally. "Rude is all right, but I don't trust you with Reno. Not even if he's walking away."

His voice brooked no argument. Yuna sighed and got into the passenger's seat, depositing her backpack on the floor.

"Where do you live?"

-  
Yuna had unbuckled her seatbelt and was just about to open the passenger's door when she remembered something. "Leon?"

"What?"

"Is... is your name really Squall Leonhart Loire?"

He looked at her sharply, but not in an irritated way. More like surprised. Then he looked away from her and sighed, "Yes. Squall Leonhart Loire is my _real_ full name."

Normally Yuna would say 'Oh' and get out quickly then, but she was getting curious. "But... why did you change it?"

He was quiet for a few moments after that, then asked, "When you hear the name Squall, what do you think of?"

She thought of storms and lightning-laced days in the winter. Then she applied that feeling to a person, and said, "I think of someone who is very... troubled, I guess. At least underneath." It actually fit Leon very nicely.

"Exactly." Leon turned off the engine and told her frankly, "I got to a point where I didn't want people assuming I was troubled within seconds of learning my name, even if they were right. So I started giving them Leon instead--it was much more mysterious that way. Especially when I learned that _some_ people were looking up 'Leon Loire' on the Internet."

"Laguna," Yuna said. Rikku had done that, to her embarrassment, and since Leon Loire wasn't anyone's real full name she had gotten several possible results, including Laguna Loire. "I met him in the park. Are you related to Laguna Loire?"

"Yes." Leon sighed. Again. He looked pensive. "Yes, Laguna is my father."

"Oh." But Laguna was so friendly and Squall was not. She felt--

"Hey, Yuna!" Isaac had come out of the house and tapped on the window. "I was just wondering... what are you doing in a police car?"

"I'll be out in a second, Isaac," Yuna said. "He was just driving me home."

His face relaxed in relief. "Oh, all right. I was just going to Wakka's house, so I'm there if you need me." Wakka was the soccer coach and assistant coach for swimming. He lived across the street.

Leon looked perplexed as Isaac walked away. "Is he your brother?"

"He's my cousin," Yuna corrected him quickly. "I... I live with my uncle."

Then Leon did something very strange. "You're an orphan!" he exclaimed, in the most pitying, anguish-filled tone Yuna could have imagined from him. She winced and opened the door quickly.

"Yes... I am. Bye, Leon--thanks for the ride."

"You're an _orphan!_" he repeated. "But--but you don't _deserve_ it!"

"_Bye_," she said, a little louder. She got out of the car very quickly.

-  
Yuna had gone up the stairs and taken her backpack off, but when she looked out the window Leon had not even started his car. It was very strange. She did not think she liked being pitied by the resident ice king, although she had to admit she was more confused and a little bit nervous. Why would Leon care about her being an orphan?

But after a few minutes, Yuna heard the car starting, and she watched Leon drive off down the road. Once he was gone, the sight of the empty parking space did not make her feel better at all. She felt nervous. She picked at her hands feebly and went to sit in front of the computer, then changed her mind and went to the kitchen. Once there, she drifted uneasily. She didn't know whether she wanted to read a book, or cry, or eat chocolate, or go on the computer and look up 'Squall Leonhart Loire.'

Yuna ended up doing none of those things. She went to the living room and dug up a few old, dusty books full of memories.

-  
Normally, Yuna would start flipping through the pages of photo albums that were somewhat past her tenth birthday, when the younger version of herself looked a little more comfortable with her cousins, or she would start at the beginning and stop near her ninth Christmas, when her father was still in the photos.

But today, she decided to start at her ninth birthday. She started at the photo of herself and Rikku and Isaac and Cid. They all looked like they were pretending to have fun, except for Yuna, who looked quite solemn for a nine year old girl. Rikku had not quite understood what had happened and kept asking Cid what was going on. Isaac, not being much for words, hadn't been much different from his usual self, other than somewhat pitying of his cousin. He'd said that she didn't deserve it, right before she blew out the candles.

So she'd wished on all nine candles that Isaac was right, and she'd thought that maybe her father would show up in the morning and take her home.

"You're an orphan... but you don't deserve it."

-  
_Leon. Leon took me home and he said that I didn't deserve it. And now I'm eighteen. I was nine when I made that wish and now I'm eighteen, so it happened __**backwards**_  
_  
I don't believe it._

-  
She kept remembering that feeling in her stomach, that open-hearted feeling of certainty. She flipped past her ninth birthday and saw herself jumping rope with Rikku, Isaac trying to teach Rikku the team's secret and super special victory sign with a soccer ball at his feet, Cid and Isaac and Rikku and herself, then Tidus and Rikku and Isaac and herself. Paine and Rikku and herself.

She realized upon seeing these photos that she had never been alone, not even when her father had just died. She was never alone at school, and this was the first time in years that Rikku had had a dentist appointment at the same time that Isaac had soccer practice. It bothered her to be alone, as she thought dangerous things without anyone to distract her.

All she could think about was her ninth birthday, and how tragic Leon looked when he was alone, and how today he'd rescued her from a smooth-talking FBI agent with blazing red hair. All she could think about was her wish and how anguished Leon looked when he said, "But you don't deserve it!" and how uncomfortable she'd felt at the time.

Yuna felt several things. She felt regret. She wanted to rewind the clock and tell him, "Yes, I have known since my ninth birthday that I don't deserve it! And _you_ don't deserve to be alone anymore!"

She thought about how distant he was, from anyone. From everyone. He was always an arm's length away, and since she was thinking about things being backwards and turning back time she thought, with childish sureness, that he was too anguished to _not_ be an orphan himself, so things must have happened backwards in his life as well. He might have found out about Laguna Loire too late and changed his name so nobody would notice.

_...That's __**stupid**_, Yuna thought tearily. The feeling crept up through her stomach and lodged in her throat. She felt like her heart was going to explode with all the bad feelings bottled up.

She also felt pity, for the orphan he probably wasn't, but more for Leon himself. He was a _policeman._ He was such a tragic hero!

_Leon... Leon! Come back so I can ask you all these things!_

And then Yuna looked at the clock and realized she had only ten minutes until Rikku came back. Leon had left before she could fix her mistake. She was not used to being alone and searching her soul, so this had gotten nowhere. She didn't know _what_ she was feeling right now, and even if she did she had no other options that could magically save her life in an instant. It was not her ninth birthday anymore.

So she did the only thing she _could_ do.

She cried.

And when Rikku came home she was still crying, surrounded by old photo albums in the living room.

"Yuna?! Yuna, what's wrong?"

_"I want to save Leon!"_


	11. Sparks from Flint

**Circles in the Dirt**  
_Sparks from Flint_

-

"Did... did you see him on the bridge in the park? You were fighting with Isaac, but you could have seen... Leon. How he looked, all alone on the bridge. He was wearing all black with a fur collar. I gave it back to him before--that's who the jacket belonged to. I didn't say anything because I thought it didn't matter.

"And now that I think about it, Leon is always sad when he's alone. It's not just on weekends. When he started dancing with me, he didn't order me around. He didn't act a _thing_ like I thought he would. He was almost _nice_ to me, even. I think he only agreed because he felt sorry for me. Because there was nobody else.

"Today he drove me home, and... and while he was driving he had this _look_ on his face. Like he was thinking about something else and it was tearing up his insides. Like he had leukemia or someone just ripped out his heart. He looked confused. Then Isaac came out and he thought Isaac was my brother, so I told him I was an orphan. I didn't know he would be so worked up about it, but he was.

"He said... he actually _said_, 'You don't deserve it!' He said it like he knew what he was talking about. I don't know if he really did or not, but... he _sounded_ like it. He sounded surprised and sorry for me. I _think_ he felt sorry for me.

"I... I think... I don't think I want to save him anymore. I think that was just an excuse. _Leon_ doesn't need saving. I don't think I've _ever_ seen anyone so strong and so sad at the same time. I think I'm in love with him now...

Now!

"And... and I don't know what to _do_ about it."


	12. Emerald Green

**Note:** Schoolwork and personal problems aside, I'd like to know exactly why such a vital chapter as the previous one was virtually ignored.  
**  
-  
Circles in the Dirt**  
_Emerald Green  
_

-  
It was Tuesday.

_The worst Tuesday of my **life!**_ Yuna thought. She stared at her half of the closet and saw only sensible blues, whites, and blacks. She wondered if that had contributed to her depression of yesterday, and knew that it had not. But she felt like blaming something. She was not really in love, she thought fiercely: she only felt horribly sorry for Leon, and she had been thinking irrationally. She hadn't cried that much since Tidus left for Germany.

She _had_ been alone in the house--but now she was securely in the midst of other people's background noises, sounds of Cid cooking something for breakfast and Rikku's bouncing around.

When Yuna got to school, she felt a little better. When she was very upset, Rikku would know not to tell anyone, besides possibly Paine, and Paine was close-mouthed about everything. So she was safe on those fronts. Still, she felt a bit queasy when she saw Leon at the gate, monitoring the stream of people walking into school.

She tried not to meet his gaze, and she could see his surprised twitch out of the corner of her eye. Then Rikku waved goodbye and went to class, as did Paine. Yuna felt safely anonymous in the crowd that swilled a little closer once her two best friends had gone, so she chanced a look back.

_Leon was looking straight back at her._

So she fidgeted and went quickly to English.

-  
Right before lunch, Yuna had made the wrong decision entirely to stay behind after class to give an excuse for the homework she had not finished. A _plausible_ excuse--her math teacher Mr. Geraldine found it unusual for her to turn in something unfinished or even late, but she deliberately substituted something very vague, yet plausible. He decided to give her half credit instead of no credit.

When she walked into the hallway, it was completely empty. She minced through the corridor along the very edges, half expecting to see Leon any second. But she turned a corner and sighed when she didn't, so she continued with much more of a confident stride and then bumped into a solid black-clad figure.

"Paine?" she asked, feeling optimistic.

The figure turned around. "Leon," he corrected.

Yuna's stomach churned. She couldn't quite move until he said, "I need to talk to you."

It seemed all of her hopes were being dashed lately. She made a mental note to never expect that anything would go the way she wanted to, ever again, then she gingerly followed Leon.

-  
He stopped at a completely unoccupied corner behind the library and sat on the bench outside, at the very end of it. Yuna sat down so there was another person's worth of space between them.

"I just realized that I may have bothered you when I said you didn't deserve to be an orphan yesterday."

He was right, Yuna thought, and _then_ some. But admirably, Leon had cut right to the chase. Obviously he had thought a lot about this as well, because it sounded planned; but it didn't sound routinely memorized or fake. He sounded like he was being careful about his words.

"And... when I was your age, I wouldn't have wanted to hear that, either. Not from a _normal_ person. So I'll just tell you this now--I was an orphan, too."

Yuna couldn't help staring at him. "You--you _were?_"

"Yes. I was." He turned his head away from her and stared uncomfortably into the distance, fidgeting with his hands. Yuna noticed there was a very irritated pink spot spreading across his wrist like a long, shallow bruise, only red. Then she noticed he was not _fidgeting _with his hands but rubbing them, like they itched severely.

"What's wrong with your hands?" Yuna asked, before she could stop herself. Leon sighed.

"I need longer gloves."

His came only to his wrist; he pulled off his left glove and Yuna exclaimed, "Oh--that looks like a _burn!_"

"It's not. It's an allergenic rash." He took off the other glove and that hand was similarly red. "I'm somewhat allergic to basil."

"Oh..." Yuna struggled, then reached out hesitantly. "Can I see?"

He frowned at the sudden forwardness, then shrugged and said, "Go ahead."

His hands were alarmingly hot. Yuna thought it was very strange that the rash along his wrist was simply an abnormal shade of pink while his hands were blazing red and rather swollen.

"Why are your hands so red? The rest of your arms aren't so glaring."

"I don't know. It's always been like this."

In fact, the two different shades of red were distinctly separated by a line. Yuna looked up at Leon's face.

"Maybe your skin is sensitive..."

"_What?_" He sounded affronted at the thought.

Yuna stretched so she could look a bit more closely at his scar. It was a straight, long gash that made him look rather dashing, but it must have been murderous to keep clean and she doubted there had been a bandage, as it was right across his nose and any wrapping would have blinded him, partially or completely. She steeled herself, then asked very professionally, "When you got that scar, was the skin around it raised for a while after?"

"Well... yes. But the swelling went down after a few days."

"When you get a scratch, is it the same? Does it swell, even if it's small?"

Leon thought for a moment. "Yes."

"Oh." Now she knew the problem. "Okay then. Your hands are so red because you're wearing gloves and it irritates the skin. Normally it's not enough to really do anything, but since you're having an allergic reaction you're probably more sensitive, so they get even redder. If you leave them off, the swelling will probably go down."

"How do you know?"

"Er... first-hand experience. Only I have problems with sunburns, too." Rikku and Isaac and Uncle Cid were quite tan, so Yuna supposed she'd gotten it from her father. It made her feel even more conspicuous, especially in summer.

She let go of Leon's hand and he did not put his gloves back on. There was an uncomfortable silence in which Yuna's nerves screamed; then to assauge her anxiety, she asked, "Leon?"

"Yes?"

"How were you an orphan?"

He did not look back at her either. He just spoke.

"My mother died when I was born. Then somehow, my sister Ellone and I were separated from my father. I don't remember what happened and Ellone never talks about it. I don't think even she understands. I grew up, and I got to be a policeman. When I was twenty-two, a new officer transferred in, with the same last name as me and Ellone. It was Laguna. At first I couldn't believe he was even related to me because he seemed so... so... _trivial._ Then Ellone saw him and she knew. One thing led to another, and I guess I found my father."

"How old are you now?" Yuna asked.

"Twenty-five."

That was sad. He was probably still not comfortable with the thought.

"So you still feel like an orphan," Yuna said.

"Yes... Yes, I do." He looked straight at her then, watching her face. Now Yuna felt more comfortable handling his pity. At least she knew it was built on empathy instead of a vague preconception. "Do you understand now?"

"Yes," Yuna said. "I understand completely."

People were never the same when they came back. Not the way you remembered. Yuna was still wondering, even though she was over it, if Tidus would be Tidus once he got back from Europe. He probably would be, but...

Yuna pressed her back into the reassuringly solid wall behind her and let her gaze drift from Leon. She kept expecting someone to pass by and startle them, but no one ever did. It was probably because they were right behind the library. No one _ever_ bothered to take the back exit while Quistis was there.

Then Leon said something else, and it stuck with her for the rest of the day.

"I didn't want you to think that I pitied you because you were an orphan. I wanted you to know that I felt sorry for you because _I_ was an orphan."


	13. Slate Gray

**Circles in the Dirt**_  
Slate Gray_

-  
Sometimes Yuna thought she could still hear Tidus cheering the whole team on with a whistle. Normally Rikku was the honerary cheerleader, but they had had an awful lot of losing streaks even though they were trying their hardest and they knew they were all good. Wakka called it bad luck. Tidus said it was because they weren't trying hard enough.

Tidus had certainly put everything he had into everything he did. That was how he had gotten to Europe in the first place. Yuna thought about his cheerful tackle-hugs and felt feverish and weak when she tried to remember how it felt. It felt strange. Every time she tried, it was almost like the memory-Tidus was ready to pass through her like a ghost.

This was when Yuna realized she was not quite over Tidus. She had just shoved it to the back of her mind, and now it was worrying her--how much time she spent actively avoiding thoughts that made her miserable, like whenever she went to a soccer game for Isaac and saw the empty space where their star player was supposed to be.

She tried not to think about the loss of morale that the team had suffered and she especially tried not to think about the day at the airport when he had sat her down and been totally serious for once. But now his words kept ringing through her head.

-  
_"Listen, Yuna, about... __**us**__... It'll be over a year till I get back, and since you're not even going to be in the same __**country**__ as I am for that year I've been thinking about it. And I've decided that... I really shouldn't keep a girl like you waiting. So--listen, don't cry! I-I knew you were going to wait for me. That's __**why**__ I'm sort of... breaking up with you. Halfway. If I don't say this then you're going to wait and be alone for a year and you won't... It wouldn't be fair. You don't deserve that, Yuna."_

-  
Yuna thought about how everyone seemed to be saying that to her and felt absolutely no different than before.

_People keep saying I don't deserve it, but it happens to me anyway. I don't want __**sympathy**__ anymore--I want someone to fix me._

She put her head down in her folded arms as her teacher said something about rampant cliches in literary works and told them they were to write an essay about one in particular.

Yuna could think of one. It was the orphan on an epic quest to make a place for themselves in a world of great indecency where everyone was terrible. She'd often read those kinds of books and felt disillusioned afterwards.

_People are not that cruel_, Yuna thought, seeing Leon in the back of her mind and a fading, dreamlike Tidus right next to him. _But the things that happen to them __**can**__ be_.

-  
"Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, _shit!_"

Leon woke up at four in the morning to Donald's rampant cursing and sat up groggily, holding his head.

"Leon, get your leather-clad ass _down_ here!"

Leon stumbled down the steps and onto the porch to find the canary cage in shambles on the ground, a squawking mess of feathers, and an equally distressed Donald holding his arm. Something wet was dripping down his sleeve.

"Donald, what _happened?!_"

"Fucking raccoon tried to eat my _birds!_" Donald keened, sounding both pained and vicious. "Call the hospital! I got _bit_ when I tried to chase it off!"

"Oh, god!" Leon ran back into the kitchen and dialed the strangely unfamiliar emergency number. Then, as an afterthought, he called Donald's girlfriend.

-  
"Leon, um, is it too much to ask for you to stay here and set things straight?" Donald asked, as a fluttering Daisy stood next to his stretcher.

Leon thought of not having to stay awake in an empty waiting room while Donald got his shots and said quickly, "No. You go ahead."

"And thanks for calling Daisy, man."

"No problem." He hadn't wanted Donald to be alone, and he knew Daisy would be infinitely better at comforting and waiting than himself. That was why he had called her.

As the ambulance left, sirens wailing and flashing their bright lights out into the street, Leon wandered to the porch and started fixing things. None of the birds were hurt, but he could definitely see feathers scattered across the ground and the bottom of the cage. They didn't make a sound as he righted the cage and set it back on the table. Leon wondered if birds could get traumatized.

After around twenty minutes, whatever he could fix was in order and Leon found his way to the kitchen. The bright lights were on, which didn't help him feel like going back to sleep. He was even more awake than ever and listening to the parekeets in the kitchen squawk to their fellows on the porch was extremely annoying.

Leon knew better than to try warm milk. That was an urban myth. And he did not want to try sleeping pills, though he knew Donald took them occasionally. Personally he thought it was weak to use drugs to calm one down. But it had taken the policeman so long to get to sleep while he was thinking about Roxas and Namine with their unfortunate, bloodthirsty parents, and Yuna who had none at all. When Donald had woken him up he had only been asleep for five hours, maybe six.

Leon slouched in his chair and put his head down, thinking. Then he picked up the phone again.

-  
"...Hello?" After three or four rings, Laguna's sleepy voice came on. "Who is this?"

"It's Leon."

"Oh--Squall!" He sounded more confused and exhausted than anything. "Can I ask why you're calling at five in the morning?"

"Well, Donald just got bit by a presumably rabid racoon and... well... he's been rushed to the hospital for rabies shots."

"Whoa! I hope he's all right there."

Leon shrugged, then remembered Laguna couldn't see and said, "Nnh."

"Eloquent as ever," Laguna remarked. "I bet you shrugged. So are you asking me for ways to get back to sleep fast?"

"Yes. No! I mean... not exactly." Leon stifled a yawn. "I've... been thinking about something."

"Let me guess--it's a girl."

"What? No." His father sounded teasing, so Leon ignored Yuna's heterochromatic eyes and forged on. "Actually, I've gotten a tip on the... serial killer who rips out people's hearts."

"Now you know why we just call him-her-them the Heartless. Fire away, Squall."

"Um." Leon cringed. "See, the people who tipped me off might both get hurt."

"Were they anonymous?"

"No, they came to me in person. They're... they're students. I know who they are."

"Oh."

Leon thought of Namine's bruising and Roxas' temper. Their wild, hysteric eyes as they were dragged away by their parents. Then he said quietly, "I don't know if they wanted to be anonymous or not, but I will tell you that they know where the hearts are, and that might be a clue."

"Might? More like a big, flashing neon _sign _with arrows pointing straight to the killer! Where are the hearts and who are those students who told you? They must be traumatized."

Leon struggled; Laguna's concern was rapidly giving him a headache. Then he said, "Roxas and Namine Almasy."

"Almasy? Larxene's kids?"

"Ugh."

"Why haven't they told _her_, then?"

Leon thought. Hard. He needed to say something that Laguna would believe, but he couldn't blatantly point _away_ from Larxene and Marluxia Almasy or else he would be helping to veil them--which could possibly be used against him in a trial. Then he settled on one word that solved all his problems. "Blackmail."

"Hmm." Laguna sounded impressed. "Right, if it was _that_ easy we would have caught the killer sooner."

Leon sighed with relief. Now if Larxene was busted for her murderous, scheming ways they couldn't say he'd tried to help them.

"Do you think Larxene should question them? Or am I--"

"I don't know about _Larxene,_" Leon said, perhaps a bit too forcefully. She was famous for being the bad cop in interrogations. And also she was a child abusing, manipulative bitch, but--

"Right. Again." There was silence on both ends, then Laguna asked, "Now that we're done solving murder mysteries, is there anything else you want to talk to me about?"

"Um." Leon thought of various things, including tips on getting back to sleep... and... and--

He shook his head sharply. Then he corrected himself and said, "No. I guess I'll just go back to sleep... See you, Laguna."

"Good night, Squall."

_Click._

Leon sighed and put his head back down in his arms. He was too exhausted to admit that all three of those words had been wrong.


	14. Sapphire Blue

**Circles in the Dirt**  
_Sapphire Blue_

-  
"Are you _really_ in love with him?" Paine, as logical as ever, did not stop at a chance to ask Yuna herself after Rikku had bounced off to the snack line to get something.

"Yes. No. Maybe...?" Yuna put her head in her arms. "I don't know!" She felt like crying again. It was very irritating how she felt this constant sense of danger, even when there was no one around. Or perhaps it was _because_ there was no one around.

"Give me a straight answer." Once started, Paine would not leave her alone. She stared into the blank shadow between Yuna's forearms and her face and said sharply, "Tell me what's _really_ bothering you about this."

"He's... he's..." _Too intimidating. Too handsome. Too cold. Too much like me!_ "He's _twenty-five,_" she settled weakly. "Paine! Do you know what that _means?!_"

Paine shrugged. "If it means an eight year age gap, I don't see why you're so stressed. _My_ parents are--"

"But I'm _eighteen!_ What..." Yuna took a deep breath. "If this goes around the school, then what will people _think_ of me? I don't want anyone to think I'm... a..."

"Yuna, you've already _had_ a boyfriend before. And even though everyone was _surprised,_ it wasn't like they--"

"He was the same age. That was different. That was _okay!_" She shivered and kept breathing hard. Paine gave her a bottle of water and she drank it readily, which helped a lot. She no longer felt on the edge of tears. "Th-thanks."

But Paine was thinking of other things. "Plus seven..." she mumbled. Yuna tilted her head.

"What?"

"Half his age plus seven. That's generally how people decide."

"...Nineteen," Yuna told her, after doing some quick mental math.

"It's a year off," Paine said, rather reassuringly for someone who was so antisocial. "It's _fine_."

"It doesn't matter." Yuna took out her lunch and started eating it morosely. "He's a policeman. He'll probably be too honorable to do anything if I _do_ say something to him. Which I _won't._"

Paine sighed. "There's no talking to you now."

"Okay, chickies!" Rikku came back from the lunch line laden with small bags and cookies. "What'd I miss?!"

"Yuna got weepy again," Paine said. "But I guess she's all right now?"

"Yes," Yuna answered glumly. "Fine."

-  
Leon felt extremely annoyed. Was _every_ teenager having a moral crisis lately? So far he'd run into several students in a corner of the school smoking marijuana, which while not being the most heinous crime ever committed was definitely not fun. When he'd come across Roxas and Namine, the two appeared to be shadows of themselves, clinging to each other and barely noting the presence of anyone else.

Also the silverhaired boy Riku had been muttering to himself, something like "can't go back into the darkness" and the names of his two best friends over and over. It sounded uncomfortably like symptoms of withdrawal. Or insanity. Though he _had_ snapped out of it when Leon had made his presence known--disturbingly quickly.

But now, it was the end--the only good part of a horrible day. Leon sighed in relief as the final bell rang and students poured out by the dozens through every available exit. Then he caught sight of a familiar brown-haired profile walking away from the crowd with two others conspicuously absent.

He frowned. Yuna wasn't the sort to habitually separate herself from people, even if she never interacted with them. Her head was bowed more firmly than usual, gaze lasered tightly to the ground. Leon cautiously got a little closer, noting that her shoulders were very slightly shaking.

This was odd. "Yuna?"

She turned, then quickly turned back. "Oh, hello..."

"Are you... all right?"

She nodded. Quickly. "I'm just stressed. A bit."

He wondered if this had anything to do with the day before and made a mental note to kill Reno Kinneas someday. "Are you sure?" he pressed. He didn't like seeing women cry. It made him feel helpless, especially when he didn't know the reason.

"Yes." Yuna started walking faster as her shoulders hitched. "But thank you anyway..."

Leon watched her leave, chin tucked firmly into her collarbone and shoulders slumped. It was uncomfortably familiar and he swam in his own confusion before realizing with a horrible jolt that this was exactly what Ellone would have done. Only once had he ever seen his older sister cry, and that was when for the fourth time (or the fortieth), she had urged him to call Laguna his father and recieved a scathing reply in return. She'd left, shoulders shaking, despite his immediate and desperate apologies, pushing him away politely as if he'd done nothing wrong.

Now he felt the strangest instinctual urge to protect her. He was about to say something else to make her stop before a blonde flash raced past him, towing a black-clad figure along.

"_Yunie!_ Wait for us!"

Oh. So she _wouldn't_ be alone.

Leon felt slightly hurt.

-  
"Hi, Ellone."

"Hey." Ellone hugged him and this time it felt awkward. "What's up, Squall? You never come visit me on Mondays."

"Ah... it was a bad day..."

"I'll make some tea or something. Liz got me hooked on the stuff." Quietly Leon watched as Ellone brewed some Earl Grey tea, then set the resulting cup in his hands. "Be careful. It's hot."

She sat down across the table in her immaculately kept kitchen. Ellone had a white tablecloth over her table, which had not one speck on it. Leon thought about his kitchen and how sparse it was, then felt acutely uncivilized in uniform.

"So, what's wrong?"

_I've found the younger, more vulnerable version of __**you,**_ Leon felt like saying. But he did not. "I'm pretty sure everyone's crazy today," he said finally. "Except you."

"That's nice." Ellone was not impressed. "What's really on your mind?"

In addition to trying too hard, Ellone knew him too well. That was a strike--Yuna did not know him at all, and vice versa. He didn't know if she tried too hard.

"There are these kids... and, I never know what to do when there's a child abuse case being worked," Leon said. "Laguna always takes the first step. And there's another student who's an orphan and it bothers me."

"Oh." He was glad Ellone didn't ask him _why_, like a _therapist_. She knew he had issues with bad parents and simply accepted it. It was what he'd always appreciated about her. He wondered if Yuna just accepted things like that and thought that she probably did. Maybe a little too much, like Ellone once more.

If he tried, Leon could definitely see an older Yuna sitting in front of him, with white shirt, lighter hair, and different colored eyes, and wondered if she knew she had the potential to be as strong and well-adjusted as his older sister was. And, Leon decided, she probably didn't.

_That_ made him sad.


	15. Gneiss Gold

**Circles in the Dirt**  
_Gneiss Gold_

-  
Yuna was sitting alone in a cafe after school listening to a sitarist play something soothing and melodic and lush. She had decided to stop here and be alone for a while, collecting her thoughts, but the miscellaneous noises made it rather hard to think. It didn't help that the sitar music was beautiful. It kept distracting her.

The sitarist was also distracting. He was very good-looking with sandy brown hair stuck up in an interesting cut. Yuna could hear a few girls whispering about him.

"...Even though... sitar is kind of weird..." It _was_ rather odd. The sitarist didn't look much older than herself.

Then the music stopped.

"Can I stop playing, Mrs. Hawkins? My hands are numb."

"Oh, go ahead." Sarah Hawkins smiled benevolently at the sitarist and continued taking an order. Yuna's uncle knew her and respected her, as she was a single parent with a rebellious son and a business, but the cafe owner had a strict no-smoking policy which Cid had never really stood behind. So, though Yuna, Rikku, and Paine frequented it occasionally, Cid very rarely contributed his patronage.

The sitarist gave Sarah a brilliant smile, then looked at Yuna. After a moment, he lugged everything over to her table and greeted her quite cheerfully, "Hi!"

Yuna tilted her head as several girls gave her dirty looks. "Um, hello..."

"So, my name's Demyx. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist." He carefully laid his sitar down on an extra chair as Yuna listened confusedly. It was a bright, vibrant blue and it clashed with Sarah's earthy, homelike decor. "But, um, not the kind that actually did any _work._ The kind that played with dolphins all day, you know?"

Yuna smiled. The same girls that shot her dirty looks were starting to lose interest rapidly.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Yuna," she replied gratefully.

Demyx looked around quickly and remarked, "Oh, good, they've stopped staring at us. Nice to meet you, Yuna!" He held out a hand across the table and Yuna shook it delicately. He was deceptively strong and his fingers were quite rough from callouses.

"You seemed sad when I came over here," Demyx commented. "Is there something on your mind?"

Yuna started. That was awfully perceptive of him. "Um!"

"It's okay, you don't have to answer if you really don't--"

"N-no, I was just surprised." Yuna thought for a second. For someone who seemed so non-threatening, he was making her feel a little nervous. But then, most people who were taller than Yuna made her nervous. And there was this disconcerting deja-vu-like sensation--he seemed familiar for some reason, but she couldn't place where. "It's... just family stuff. And... relationship stuff..."

"Oh, that." Demyx seemed to understand. "Well, it always gets worse before it gets better, you know."

Yuna was unable to help herself. "Have I _seen_ you before? I mean, not _you,_ but--you seem kind of familiar."

"You _might!_" Demyx caroled. "You look like you're in high school. Do you know a kid named Sora? Because _I_ am his big brother!"

"Oh, _Sora!_" The sitarist's hair was quite light, but at the roots it was an obvious brown. He was also cheerful like Sora, with the same blinding grin. It was just that he was older and had a pair of startling green eyes.

"Yay! You know my brother!"

Whatever his age was, Yuna found it hard to believe that he acted it.

Suddenly someone rapped on the window. "_Demyx!_" came Sora's muffled cry. He was accompanied by Riku and Kairi and they were all waving madly to him.

"Sora!!" Demyx laughed and motioned for them to come inside. "Get in here!" Sora barreled into the coffee shop and tackled Demyx, burying his face into his older brother's coat with a glad yell.

"You're here! You're _early!_"

"Shh--don't tell Mom, little buddy, or else I'll be forced to kill you." Demyx flicked his eyes up to Sora's friends. "What, you're not joining in on the brotherly love?"

"Well, I'll just add a sister to your mix," Kairi offered. She tossed her arms around both brown-haired boys, smiling. Yuna felt left out.

"What about you, Riku?" Sora asked. He held out one arm. "Come on!"

Riku refused. "As soon as I get into that, I'm gay."

Kairi snickered and faced him squarely. "As if nobody _thought_ you were back when we were freshmen. With your long, flowing, immaculately brushed hair."

"Okay." Demyx untangled himself and brushed off his coat, then approached Riku. "I'll just give you a headlock with love, Mr. I'm Not A Gay." He seized Riku's neck playfully. At first this caused Sarah Hawkins to glance over in their direction, but she smiled and turned away soon enough.

"Careful, you might mess up his hair!" Sora quipped.

Then Kairi's gaze drifted to the table where Yuna was sitting politely. "Yuna!" she exclaimed.

"Hi." Yuna waved timidly.

"Hey, Yuna!" Sora looked at her more closely. "You didn't tell me you were friends with my brother."

"Oh, we just met." Yuna corrected apologetically. "And we were just talking." They all nodded and dragged up chairs, except for Sora when Demyx picked up his sitar and put it under the table. The table was abruptly very full, very quickly. But Yuna didn't feel nervous for some reason.

"Was he telling you his life story about being a biologist?" Riku questioned, seeming well-versed in Demyx's eccentricities. "The kind that plays with dolphins all day?"

"It's his icebreaker for people who are shy," Kairi added. "With other people he just says stuff about their clothes."

"Good _or_ bad," Sora clarified.

"Oh, did I tell you about how I mistook this one lady for Rinoa?" Demyx started to ramble. "So I saw her on a Monday after not seeing Rinoa for the weekend and I _totally_ thought she'd gotten surgery. You know, _enhancements..._ But anyway! It turned out she _wasn't_ Rinoa, her chest _was_ natural, and she was a blackbelt in _several_ martial arts."

"Oh, Tifa Lockhart," Riku said approvingly. "You told us. And we all laughed at you, didn't we?"

The foursome was operating like a well-oiled machine, finishing each others' sentences and laughing at inside jokes and making Yuna feel washed out inside. She loved Rikku and Paine, but they never acted like this as a group. They were undoubtably more mature, with the exception of Rikku. Yuna hid herself in the friendly wash of feelings and let the others talk. She wasn't used to this social setting and these were not her friends.

She _wished_ these were her friends. She felt more alone than ever, with a queasy feeling in her stomach that was not much different from grief--but if anything, after thinking that last thought, she felt extremely guilty for being so disloyal. Yuna's gaze wandered invariably around the cafe, jumping from one inanimate object to another and never quite settling, especially not on faces. She couldn't stand to look at faces when everyone else was having such a good time and she was miserable, as if eye-contact would spread the ill-feeling like a virus.

And then, purely by chance, she slid her eyes over Demyx's shoulder in the middle of an anecdote involving lots of ice and lots of DDR.

"Dance, water, dance!" Demyx cried, causing everyone to burst into laughter. But Yuna didn't focus on that as she looked out the window and caught sight of a familiar black-gloved hand. When she looked up even further, she saw short sleeves and a white fur ruff.

Leon again.

Yuna choked.

He didn't see her at first, but as he crossed the street to the side the cafe was on he seemed to realize someone was watching him and looked exactly in Yuna's direction. Then everything got rather quiet, but it was the sort of hyper-quiet that usually came in the middle of the night when no cars were whooshing around past the window and there was nobody awake. Yuna couldn't hear _anything_. She could see people moving and talking out of the corner of her eye, but... but...

Leon blinked, surprised, and narrowed his intense gray-blue eyes to focus specifically on Yuna, which made her feel like her stomach was being jabbed with red hot needles repeatedly. Then, thankfully, the policeman's gaze dimmed in intensity and he continued walking past without a second glance.

_Who __**needs**__ a second glance when you look at people like __**that?**_ Yuna asked herself, terrified. Then she realized Demyx was waving a hand in front of her slowly.

"Hi, Yuna? Who was that?"

"Officer Loire in a fur ruff and _belts!_" Riku exclaimed, totally surprised. "It's weird to see him out of uniform."

"Gosh, is he _sexy!_" Kairi gushed suddenly.

"I take it you all know this guy?" Demyx was still confused.

"What, and you don't?" Sora thought for a moment, then had an epiphany. "Oh! You don't! But you don't know any girls who go to our school, or else you would. He's our school security guard. If you were Kairi's older brother, _you'd know._"

Kairi sighed. She had one hand on her chest and looked totally enraptured. "It's like angels combed his hair and then sent a divine wind coursing through it so it'd look slightly _mussed._"

"Okay._Now_ I understand." Demyx's green eyes fixed on Yuna's. She fidgeted as the table fell silent.

"Um..." Yuna felt nervous again.

"You sure locked eyes with him for a pretty long time," the sitarist pointed out contemplatively.

"Well, she _is_ a girl." Riku smiled apologetically at Yuna. "Sorry, Yuna, but in my _personal_ experience, most girls have a hard time looking away from hot men. And vice versa."

Kairi sighed again. It was strange to see her like this.

"That just made your day, didn't it." Sora was disbelieving, somewhat perplexed, and at the same time disillusioned.

"Yeah." Kairi brushed her red hair away from her face with the same eerie expression of bliss. "I wasn't even expecting it."

"I didn't say she locked her eyes _on_ him," Demyx argued, still speaking to Riku. "I said _with_ him. There's a difference."

"And _don't I know,_" Riku droned. He looked at Yuna and asked curiously, "Have you _met_ him outside of school?"

"W-well... _several_ times, in fact." Yuna's final shred of confidence deflated as Kairi turned eager eyes to her.

"You have? Really?"

Yuna propped her elbow on the table and rested her head in that hand. "Yes. _Really._" Kairi's enthusiasm dimmed to sobriety as she absorbed Yuna's reaction. "He's very independent and doesn't talk a lot. He doesn't even start _conversations_ that often. Therefore I don't know his favorite color or how he got that scar. So please, _don't _ask me about it. I don't even know if he comes from here... or if he's involved with anyone."

Riku shrugged. "Knowing Leon, he probably isn't."

"Who could tell?" Yuna retorted.

Riku got a contemplating look on his face, which both irked Yuna and made her inordinately glad. At least he was not angry with her for speaking out. Then he said something that left her with a general feeling of doom which she could not escape for the rest of that very long day.

"The man that hath no music in himself, nor is moved by concords of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, spoils, and strategems. The motions of his spirit are as dark as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music."

That got Yuna thinking about the dance and how very _professionally_ Leon had held her. He had not made jokes, and he had not been overly serious about it. He had, in fact, been rather condescending at first--now that she remembered, with a keen sensation of embarrassment. But then there was that random act of kindness--driving her home because he didn't trust that suited womanizer. The day when he had explained to Yuna that he had been an orphan had shown a remarkable amount of empathy for someone who was outwardly so cold and unfeeling. And besides, when Yuna had suggested Leon keep his gloves off he had taken her advice without question.

Yuna looked up at Riku and shook her head. Hard.

"You're _wrong,_" she answered determinedly, in spite of that awkward foreboding feeling she carried. "Leon is just different."

Yuna got up and left the cafe quickly, head firmly held up so she was looking straight ahead. But her gaze dropped after she looked both sides and saw no trace of Leon on either corner of the block. For some reason she felt that if Leon had still been here, she would have been brave enough to do _something_. Something unheard of that her friends would not believe. But he wasn't, so she didn't. And she didn't _dare_ to look back into the cafe.

Yuna blinked several times very hard to get rid of that stinging sensation; then she let out a heavy sigh and started walking.

She wished she'd never come here.


	16. Amethyst

**Circles in the Dirt  
**_Amethyst_

___-  
_Rikku slid the disc into the DVD player eagerly; Yuna found the orderly whirr of electronic objects stirring to life strangely hypnotizing as Paine chewed silently on her popcorn and acted bored. Paine had come over for the night while her parents threw their weight behind the acting season of the Radiant Garden Theatre. This meant a lot of rehearsals and a lot of bonding time between Paine and her friends.

"Garden State?" Isaac asked, his voice coming directly from the steps as the menu screen was displayed. "Chick flick!"

Riku brandished the remote at him. "Don't give me that chick flick crap, Brother. You _know_ you're rooting for Sam and Large!"

Paine smirked as Isaac scoffed and stormed back into his room. "Whatever!" he said, just as the doorbell rang. Everyone except Yuna began staring at nothing in particular as the silence stretched. Then Yuna got up.

"I'll get it," she volunteered, inching between Paine and the TV screen. She twisted the doorknob tentatively, wondering who would be calling on a Tuesday; then a familiar tan trenchcoat with matching hat met her eyes. However, Yuna tilted her head slightly as she didn't recognize the hair of either person in the couple on their threshold. She made a guess anyway. "...Kain?"

"Hi, Yuna." The voice of her oldest cousin greeted her brightly. His wife Rydia waved at her.

"Oh, Kain!" Yuna smiled and hugged Kain quickly while Rikku gave a loud squeal and barreled for the door.

"Big brother's come home again!" The short blonde threw her arms around his waist and nearly knocked him over, then stood back abruptly and looked at his hair. "Your hair is _brown_ now!"

"Yes. It is!" Kain took off his fedora to showcase it proudly, but Rikku only gave it a distracted nod of approval before turning to Rydia. (Kain looked hurt.)

"_Your_ hair," Rikku declared, "Is _awesome._" Paine looked up from her perch on the couch at that, and it was true--Rydia's wavy hair was now glaring green, with one red rose tucked behind her ear to accentuate it. She tossed it proudly.

"Yes. It is!"

"_Pops!!_" Rikku yelled suddenly, running up the stairs. "Brother! Kain is back! I repeat, Kain is back!"

This brought the other two members of the family down in a hurry. That, and the fact Rikku was dragging her father by the arm--Cid had not even put his cigarette out yet, so a tendril of smoke wafted through the room as he chewed on it and observed Kain intensely. "You dyed your hair, boy."

"...Do you not approve?" Kain put his fedora back on quickly in case his father did, in fact, not approve.

"And you got the most plain-jane haircut I've ever _seen_ on a man!" Cid railed. "I mean, look at your _wife!_" Kain rolled his eyes as Rydia grinned at him. "It doesn't help that your hair is fricking _brown_ now, you look like any other random shmuck--"

"_Dad!_" came three disapproving voices.

"What? I'm _lecturing!_"

Several arms gestured swiftly to Yuna, who had closed the door and was now beginning to mince back to her spot on the couch.

"Oh." Cid put his cigarette out as an afterthought. "Sorry, Yuna. But that looks cute on you!"

"...It's all right, Uncle."

"Anyway!" Rikku jumped up before the awkward silence stretched on for too long. "You must watch Garden State with us!"

Kain shuffled, Isaac looked annoyed, and Cid looked as gruff as he ever had. "I'd rather not," Kain said simply.

"I _meant_ your wife," Rikku told him. She grabbed Rydia's wrist and steered her to the rapidly crowding couch. "You cannot deny the power of the two most awesome things in this world, Rydia. Number one is your hair. Number two is Zach Braff!"

Kain rolled his eyes. Rydia gave an unwomanly scoff at that, then rearranged her green and white tiered skirt while settling into her seat. Yuna managed to squeeze in next to Paine on the other end of the couch, then sent a beseeching glance towards Kain for a reason she couldn't quite place. She just felt sad and lonely and the company of her two closest friends didn't seem to fill the void.

As if sensing Yuna's eyes on him, Kain craned his head back to look at her, absorbed the meaning behind her expression, and nodded silently while he, Isaac, and Cid travelled upstairs. A knot in Yuna's stomach eased at the gesture. Kain would know what was wrong--he was not a detective for nothing, plus he was older by about five years and that had to count for something. So for the rest of the movie she sat quietly, waiting and watching the screen as conversation floated around her and images flashed into her eyes.

-

Various degrees of professionalism defined Leon Loire's life. Professionally speaking, he could say that he had seen a wide, wide range of criminal activity from the mildly illegal to downright inhumane. He could say that he felt a fierce sense of pride, knowing to an extent what had fueled the actions. (Though there were some things he just didn't know, and those were the secrets he had no interest in delving through even from the outside. ) Arsonists liked fire. Sexual offenders enjoyed sex. If a teenager was caught doing drugs of any sort, there was likely to be a certain amount of boredom involved.

These were the mistakes people made, and Leon tried hard to learn from them. He liked to think, as someone who had never taken a fall and was not likely to take one anytime soon, that he was somehow better than these people and then some. But, there were mistakes people made that were not due to any sort of criminal inclination or innocent lack of stimulation, and those were the likeliest to turn out worst of all because no one paid attention to them.

As of now, Leon Loire checked his watch and crossed the street, completely unaware that there was such a mistake waiting on the other side of the crosswalk, small and inconspicuous.

Because, on the other side of the crosswalk, was a cafe that was somewhat over three quarters full and bustling with energy. What drew his eye was not the flurry of movement from the standing people but the stillness of one seated person. There, behind the ridiculously large, clear, and ineffectively protective glass window was Yuna Highwind, cringing into her seat. She was surrounded by people she normally did not spend time with, but that was not what drew Leon's attention either. This group, like her own (he decided in that moment), was harmless.

It was something about Yuna herself that was important, hidden carefully within her fragile frame.

Leon narrowed his eyes slightly in concentration, then decided to leave it alone and continued on his way. He was supposed to meet up with a private detective who had just returned from a foray in Hawaii. Though Leon did not particularly like private practices, someone had already contacted the investigator out of fear or (as Leon hoped was not the case) a desire for revenge. The good thing about this detective was that he was willing to work with the police force and share credit.

-

_It's... It's like this person just walked out of a movie,_ Leon thought as he stared at the P.I. dressed in a carefully coordinated tan fedora and trenchcoat. His hair was only a slightly different shade of brown, causing a monochromatic and unremarkable appearance but certainly a striking silhouette. The expression on the man's face was calm, serious, and intelligent, though it did lighten up somewhat as he reached out to shake Leon's hand.

"Hello, Officer Loire. My name is Kain Highwind."

Leon thought about the possibility of Kain being related to Yuna, due to the strangeness of their names, then decided--even after including the possibility of an extremely large gap, which wasn't too farfetched--between ages Kain was not. After all, both her cousins and her uncle were blonde.

-

**Notes:** Look, a pop culture reference!

_( __everyone watch __Juno_ )

_( __because it is awesome_ )


	17. White Strondhjeme

_Note:_ Apologies for the wait. I have made this chapter extra long as penance.****

-

White Strondhjeme

Yuna awoke at an unsightly hour of the morning face down on her pillow, and nearly leapt out of bed to get dressed before realizing she didn't know why she was hurrying. And then she remembered—Paine's parents were starring in a musical together for the first time in about twenty years. Well, it was a revival of a musical and they were the original leads.

Before Paine had been born, the part had been written for her as a more extensive role; but then Sally had needed an operation to repair her vocal cords which had instead ruined her singing voice. She had lost confidence in singing, and besides that her passion for it had waned during Paine's childhood, so she had taken up costuming instead. Now it had been rewritten to one solo piece and a duet with Jack in the reprise. It was a sad story, but Rikku had been ecstatic when she heard the news.

"Your parents are going to be super-romantic!" Rikku had gushed over the tickets Paine had brought them—three of the best seats in the house. "How do you feel, BFF?"

"For my dad, it's old news. But," Paine admitted, "I've never seen my mom on stage before. I don't think I've heard her _sing_ before—and the original recording doesn't count."

"Oh yeah… How's your mom doing on the whole rehearsal thing?"

There was an awkward pause in which Yuna nearly regretted having such an outspoken cousin. Then Paine shrugged, but it looked strained instead of nonchalant. "She's fine. The song is barely over an octave, and it's slow. More than manageable. She takes it easy during rehearsals."

Yuna was only passing familiar with musical terms, most of them having something to do with mood and speed. An octave, she knew, was from one letter of the musical scale to the same letter eight notes above or below it. It was apparently 'more than manageable,' but Sally's range had been previously been described as 'more than a match for Jack' at the peak of his career.

"You're starting to overthink it, Yunie!" Rikku broke into Yuna's thoughts before she could continue along the same depressing track, which reversed her opinion from before.

"Just act normal around them," Paine said. "They appreciate the sanity."

-

At the theatre, Yuna grabbed Rikku's hand and held on tight, since Paine was holding their seats in the front rows. Thankfully it meant they were not the unlucky ones trying to get the nonexistent last-minute tickets, but it did mean they had to wade through everybody else trying to find their seats.

"Wow—this musical is more popular than I thought, Yunie!" Rikku attempted to jump high enough to see past the ocean of heads, and gave up after the crowd nearly crushed her to the side. There was no room even to fall over. Once they got to the reserved rows of seats, Yuna reassured herself, there would be calm and at least a little more air.

Sure enough, there was. Paine waved to them from the middle of the row with a long black glove covering her arm. As Yuna settled down between her friends feeling much more safe, she glimpsed a head of familiar and shiny blonde hair pulled up into a loose chignon in the row in front of them, next to a not-quite-as-familiar black-haired girl and a completely strange blonde man in a gray suit.

"Quistis!" Rikku started waving even before the librarian turned to look at them. "Hi, Quistis! Hi, Rinoa! Hi… person next to Rinoa!"

"Seifer," the man said amicably enough.

He'd turned back as soon as he'd replied. It was probably not because of disinterest, but because of the fact that Quistis had given a very undignified snort and said, "Yes, Seifer. I call him Blondie, though, since he isn't too smart."

"There's something hypocritical about that," Seifer commented.

"So, Seifer, meet these three girls whom Rinoa gave one of Angie's puppies to in the past few weeks. Rikku, Yuna, and Paine." Quistis gestured to them in order. "They are also students at the high school I am a librarian at."

"What?" Rinoa and Seifer asked incredulously. Quistis stared down her silver-wire glasses at them, which Yuna found admirable as Seifer was taller and not even in her direct line of vision.

"My dear friend, and Seifer, there are many, many students at my—"

"We know about _that_," Rinoa said. "But 'librarian' is not a verb, Quistis, no matter how many foreign-language dictionaries you cross-reference!"

"But I used it as a…" Quistis sighed and buried her head in the palm of her gloved hand. "Oh, forget it."

There was a long pause filled with background chatter and awkwardness. Then Rinoa giggled—a very high-pitched one at that, which carried through quite easily to Yuna as Rikku joined in with her own boisterous laughter. "I'm sorry, Quistis! I heard that as 'the school I librarian at.'"

"Hmph," was Quistis' only reply. "So, dears, I see you're at Nightmare's original cast revival—and with those seats, too! You're in for a spectacular show."

"We know!" Rikku chimed in. "Paine here is Jack and Sally's daughter—ow!" Paine had jabbed Rikku with one black-satin-covered elbow. "But it's the truth!"

"No kidding?" Rinoa asked, wide-eyed. She clambered up halfway over her seat, letting a wide gold bangle slide down onto her wrist. She was wearing a strappy black and red dress, which was rather dressy for a mere musical. "I know your parents' story—Paine Skell—"

"Skellington is his stage name as there is already a Jack Wells in the company," Paine retorted. Rinoa did not seem put-off, but Yuna did, as she always felt whenever Paine was being particularly blunt. "And it's a ridiculous name anyway."

"She _is_ their daughter," Seifer remarked.

"Sorry, sweetheart." Rinoa flicked her hair out of her eyes with her bare left arm. "I guess I shouldn't be talking about names; my mom still uses her maiden name on records."

"Is she a singer?" Rikku asked.

Ushers began to trawl through the aisles shushing people as the lights dimmed and overture music started playing, so everyone's attention went to the dark purple curtain as it swept open. From what Yuna could see, Rikku looked torn between hearing the rest of Rinoa's story and watching the stage, but luckily the stage won over and she sat still, quietly focused along with everyone else on the big moment. Paine looked especially intense, eyes almost glowing in the stage lights.

-

There had been loud applause after most of the numbers, and in particular the scene where Daniel the Elf stumbled into Christmas Town for the first time, but as the first quiet chords of Catherine's Portent rang in there was a stifled silence over everyone, and when Sally entered stage right Paine leaned forward in her seat, hands clenched together as if she was nervous. Yuna touched her friend's shoulder, and Rikku leaned all the way across Yuna's seat in order to tug the brunette's wrist.

She turned slightly, and Rikku gave her a quick thumbs-up before returning to her usual position. Paine actually smiled before jerking her head back towards her mother as the first line was sung. It didn't take long for Yuna to see her friend was mouthing the words as Sally sang them. Paine had always been nonchalant, and before the performance it had been the usual, but as she slowly relaxed and her mouth stopped moving her nervousness of before became that much more apparent.

It hadn't been needed at all, though. Sally's voice was soft, but clear and perfectly on key. Stripped of all the acrobatics she had done twenty years before, the melody became that much more haunting in a contrast to most of the other songs, which were often manic. It was then that Yuna realized this would never be referred to by its official title, and always be 'Sally's Song.'

Paine did not appear to be crying while the entire audience sat completely still; nor was she showing any sort of emotion three seconds later when everyone stood up and applauded her mother, who walked perhaps a bit too briskly offstage; but she fussed with her hair nervously while Yuna stopped clapping and bent down. "Are you all right, Paine?"

"Fine. I… I just…" Paine took off her gloves and reached inside her purse for a tissue. She didn't seem able to speak any more.

-

Paine had decided to go backstage to see her parents after the show and help out the crew. Since Rikku and Yuna definitely could not go backstage, they had decided to wait at the back exit for Paine and her family. But it took them several minutes to wade through the crowd, and halfway through Rikku spotted the bathrooms and turned Yuna around. "Yunie, I swear I will only be a second. Go on without me!"

She nodded and forged ahead, hoping her cousin wouldn't take too long. The crush at the main exit was tough, though. Yuna had gotten so deep into the routine of saying 'excuse me' that when she was well past the thick of the crowd and accidentally bumped into someone at the stage exit, she didn't even think and said it above her usual meek whisper. "Excuse me, sir."

"Yuna?"

The person turned, and of course Yuna's heart gave an alarming flail. Once that was over, though, she just felt surprised. "Leon?"

"Yes, it's me." He sounded quite disillusioned. "Hello, Yuna."

"Hello…" She wondered what he was doing here. Of course he had seen the play, but… "Er, did you come here with someone?"

"Yes," Leon replied, sounding even more disillusioned. "My sister took me—her friends couldn't come, so they gave their tickets to us."

"That was very nice of them. I hope they can come next time."

"Probably not, according to Laguna," he remarked.

"Laguna?" Yuna repeated. Then she remembered. "Your father?"

"That's right, dear!" The answer came from an entirely different source, and a pair of silhouettes approached them. One was the vaguely familiar Laguna Loire, who had approached Cid at the park. The other was an unfamiliar, slender woman with chin-length brunette hair, a blue sleeveless shirt, and an ivory skirt with sensible shoes. Yuna felt unremarkable, and fiddled with a lock of her own brown hair.

"Right." Leon turned to them and said, "Yuna, this is my sister Ellone, and Laguna. Ellone, Laguna, this is a student at Destiny High."

"I believe I met you in the park a while ago," Laguna said. They shook hands, and Yuna attempted to put a little more effort into it than her usual vague clasp. She had the feeling she failed, however.

"Hello, Yuna." Ellone sounded very kind, and again Yuna wondered how Leon could be related to these people. "It's very nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you, too," Yuna replied, unable for the life of her to think of something else—_anything_ else.

"Are you here with anyone?"

Yuna wished Rikku and Paine would hurry up—even Leon had met up with his company now. But she did know that the lines in the bathrooms would be phenomenal and whatever Paine was helping with would take more than a few minutes. Even as she twisted to look for her cousin's blond hair, or Paine and her parents coming through the stage door, she knew she would not see them. So she sighed and nodded. "Yes, I am. They're being held up at the moment, but I'm sure they'll be here soon."

"Oh, that's too bad." Ellone patted her on the shoulder twice, which felt interesting as Yuna had only ever received that from her father, and sometimes her uncle. Rikku and Paine would do that sometimes, but it didn't feel the same. "We'll wait with you, dear." As Ellone said this, Leon looked uncomfortable or surprised or possibly both, for any number of reasons.

There were three.

"Yuna!" came a chipper voice in the crisp chill of the night, accompanied by several pairs of footsteps. Everyone turned to see Quistis, Rinoa, and Seifer approaching them, with Rinoa waving madly. They all looked friendly, but upon catching sight of the three others their expressions morphed into the same mix of awkwardness and astonishment, particularly Seifer. However, Quistis and Ellone saved the night.

"Ellone Loire!" the librarian said brightly, stepping forward. "I haven't seen you in ages. Are you still at Galbadia Gardens?"

"No, actually," Ellone replied with pointed cheer. "I'm working at the Port Royal Hotel now. How have you been?"

"I'm still a librarian with passion, as always." Seifer still looked like he wanted to edge away, but Rinoa grabbed his arm before smiling and waving at everyone else. "I see you brought your family."

"Hi, everyone!" Laguna took up the challenge with gusto.

"Hi, Laguna!" the three newcomers chorused.

The atmosphere felt nearly normal until Ellone said, with an edge of iron in her otherwise pleasant voice, "Leon, say hello."

"Hello Rinoa, and Quistis again," Leon said automatically. It sounded almost friendly until Yuna realized he was not going to acknowledge Seifer's presence. Then Ellone frowned and jabbed him with her elbow. "Ow! I mean—" He gave the taller man a stiff nod. "Seifer." Yuna felt very uncomfortable in the silence that followed. Seifer had seemed so normal before—but it was obvious as the two men glared at each other that there was some bad blood in their history, like a bitter rivalry or…

"I see you've changed your moniker, Squall. Ow!" That was Rinoa, only she'd stomped on his foot since she was too short to jab him in any useful place with her elbow. "Rinoa! These shoes are new and everything!"

"You are going to be polite, Seifer, or I swear I will scratch your eyes out with my newly French manicured nails."

After that, there were several minutes of forced conversation. Then Leon gave up, and started talking to Quistis about something that involved the teachers. Rinoa started talking with Ellone and Laguna in a conversation about their mutual friends, and said something Yuna couldn't distinguish that caused Quistis to join in. "Oh, no—we're just kicking up a fuss about Will and Liz. Have you heard what happened to them lately?"

"No!" Rinoa gasped. "What happened?"

"Did Squall arrest Liz this time?" Seifer asked, which caused an abrupt silence.

Laguna broke it. "No, they just said they were going on a cruise for the weekend… and Monday… and a little bit of Tuesday, although they probably won't be free most of that day either. It will be far away from everyone they know, and most churches. Therefore, I have deduced and will bet anyone that they are getting married at sea."

"Oh, Laguna!" Quistis laughed. "You and your matchmaking."

Yuna felt out of place amongst all of these talkative adults. She wished she could contribute in some way to the conversation, but she didn't know anyone that well or relate to anything they were saying. Finally she whispered, "Excuse me," and pushed her way past Leon while doing her best to keep from looking him in the eye. To her dismay, no one noticed while she took a seat on one of the benches by the stage door, but she felt that staying would be a waste of her time.

Yuna wondered as she watched them if she was really as mature as everyone said she was. Yuna had been alone for only a handful of times in her life, and every single one of them had her distressed if it lasted more than an hour or so. Yet when she was with people she usually felt exhausted, and not always in a nice way, so she was unsure of where she would belong.

She picked at the hem of her sleeve and managed to get one white thread loose before Leon backed out of the group and sat down, not next to her but fairly close. No one noticed Leon leave, either, not even when he sighed and told her, "Talking to people gets on my nerves."

"That's…"

"I know that's a horrible thing to say," he continued. "But it does."

"I was going to say that talking to people makes me feel tired, but… all right." She brushed her hair out of her face and stared at her hands. When Leon nodded without giving her any ideas on how to counteract her disease of 'not being sociable like everyone else' (like getting out more or toughening up) she tried to will the stinging sensation out of her eyes. To her surprise, she started talking. "It's not fair how people will think getting out more will solve my problem of talking to people when that's my problem in the first place. I don't like the things everyone else likes. I don't like—"

"Being invited to parties where you don't know anyone except the person who invited you when he stole your lunch and probably did something he shouldn't have two hours before, so you're stuck in the middle of his humungous loud family and friends and—" Leon withdrew suddenly from the conversation. "I'm sorry, Yuna. I shouldn't have interrupted."

"It's all right…" Yuna sniffed and tried to hide it, but didn't know if it worked or not. "I don't remember what I was going to say."

"But the point stands, doesn't it?" She nodded, but it turned out to be a rhetorical question. "All these people, thinking there's something wrong with you just because you happen to not broadcast everything you find out, everything you feel in a phone call at the end of the day…"

_And his motions dark as Erebus._

"They think we don't have emotions, but we _do,_" Yuna insisted, not caring whether he understood or felt annoyed at her interruption, or whether she was wrong to use the plural. "We just don't talk about them."

Leon had stopped in the middle of his rant already, but something cleared in his expression and he stayed silent for much longer than Yuna expected him to, with his fine gray-blue eyes focused directly on her. "To them, though—" and he gestured to the group away from their bench, "It is the exact same thing."

Yuna had run out of words, so she sighed and looked away. "That's sad."

"You'll learn that when you're out in the world," Leon told her. "Part of you doesn't believe me, but you will. They don't understand that not talking about something will not make it cease to exist."

"But I _do,_" Yuna protested. "It makes a lot of sense, unfortunately. So… I… believe you."

"Really." Leon did not seem impressed, and Yuna didn't blame him. She was not very forceful at stating her opinions, even if they were entirely true. He frowned while putting his next sentence together, and then asked her, "Do you believe the earth is turning?"

"What?"

"Do you believe the earth is turning?" he repeated. She couldn't tell if he was irritated or not, which rather alarmed her. "It makes sense when you look at it on paper, but when the sun comes up and your shadow crawls across the ground, do you believe we are spinning all alone in space? Do you really believe it when the world is so quiet that you can hear yourself breathe?" Again he watched her eyes. "I know it sounds mean, but—"

"You're not mean," Yuna assured him. "You're just honest."

For the first time Leon's expression lightened. He didn't laugh, but there was a very faint curve at the ends of his mouth which Yuna recognized as a smile, from her experience looking in the mirror.


	18. Author's Note

**Author's Note:**

Something important has happened! Please go to my profile for details.


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